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Casey McKinney/Special to the Daily Planet
Berkeley resident Aaron Bartlett eyes up his next bike jump at the Shady 80 bike course. Bartlett is among those advocating for a new bike park when the Shady 80 is consumed by the Eastshore State Park.

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Area motorcross bikers are frustrated. And they’re teaming up to take action.

“It’s time bikers were shown the same respect as skaters,” said biker John Wold, 33-year-old graphic designer.

Berkeley’s new $750,000 skate park is scheduled to open Saturday but bikers are not permitted to use it for their two-wheeled acrobatics. As commuters raced down Interstate 80 Tuesday evening, dozens of bikers met in a parking lot near the pedestrian bridge at Berkeley’s Aquatic Park to plot a strategy. Their goal: a new park for motorcross biking, otherwise known as BMX.

“The city of Berkeley is a big fan of volunteer-park building,” said Stephen Swanson, the president of Berkeley Partners for Parks.“This piece of land and an adjacent smaller piece are what we are hoping will be the site of a new bike park,” he said, as bikers huddled together on an 11,000-square-foot piece of land at Aqautic Park, adjacent to the bay.

Planning of the new park began in democratic fashion. Some bikers proposed concrete and wooden ramps. Others preferred just dirt. A fence was suggested to define the area, to protect it from vandals and keep pedestrians from wandering into the action. A bathroom or a portable toilet would also be needed. The bikers voted against electricity to keep costs down and to ensure the park would close at an early hour.

Their motivation was part survival, part envy. Development of the new Eastshore State Park threatens a current dirt bike course called the Shady 80. Bikers are seeing other recreation groups, like skateboarders, get more attention from park and city officials.

They think the new park can be created for about $75,000 and even less if only dirt obstacles are used.

“All we need is to haul in some fill dirt, which contractors would donate free of charge,” said biker Jeremy Swanson.

Bikers like Jake Taylor, who has done much of the building and maintenance of jumps at Shady 80, would gladly volunteer services at a new park.

“We just need a water source, and maybe a tool shed for rakes and shovels,” Taylor added.

The idea is gaining support. Kate Obenour, who was a chief lobbyist for the Berkeley Skate Park is also pushing for the creation of a bike park. So is Councilmember Linda Maio, who represents the district where the park is proposed.

“I think when a sport arises from the youth, like this one has, we should support it,” Maio said. She suggested that perhaps neighboring cities like Albany and Oakland could invest in the project as well.

Wrap barbed wire around a baseball bat. Beat a friend with it onto a plywood plank doused with lighter fluid and sparked into a table of fire. Then check to make sure he’s bleeding.

It’s all for fun and sport in the world of amateur hardcore wrestling, documented in "The Backyard," a film by Paul Hough screening at the Pacific Film Archive Sept 18.

All around the world teenagers gather in backyards to beat the crap out of each other, using dangerous implements and moves they see on television. Some of them with ambitions to become professional wrestlers see the backyard as a kind of rudimentary training ground. Others do it just because they like it.

Hough traveled across America in search of makeshift wrestling rings and Pits of Pain dug in vacant lots. A skinny, long-haired amateur who calls himself The Lizard talks the talk of a pro wrestler. He has the cocky showmanship for WWF but not the weight. The movie follows him out of the backyards of central California to Las Vegas where a wrestling promotion company had searched for the next big thing.

Most other kids don’t have their sights on professionalism. They wrestle for fun and do their best to put on a show. These are not teens who didn’t make the wrestling team at school who are practicing their holds and throws at home. No, these kids use razors and thumbtacks and barbed wire for grandiose scenes of brutality.

A pair of brothers, Bo and Justin Gates in rural Nevada worked up a whole storyline for their matches. "3 Stages Of Hell" is a three-act drama of increasing pain, wherein two rival brothers – one the mother’s favorite, the other the outcast – battle to the "death," ending with one throwing the other into a sheet of flaming plywood covered in barbed wire.

The Gates’ mother played the part of the mother. A girlfriend videotaping the scenes cries behind the camera as her boyfriend is thrown into a pit of barbed wire. The scene, and many others in the film, is disturbing. There are no special effects. Later, while drying her eyes, Bo’s girlfriend tells Hough how proud she is of Bo’s accomplishments.

Some parents like Bo and Justin’s mom support their sons’ hardcore interest. Granted, some wrestling involves only garbage can lids, thin plywood and sheets of corrugated tin to make a big noise. There’s no bloodshed here. But other parents are horrified when they see what their kids do. One distraught mother, after weeping after her son body-checked onto a field of thumbtacks, pleads to Hough’s camera for parents to stop the madness. Her son and his wrestling partner, meanwhile, sullenly pick up their gear and go somewhere else, away from mom’s hysterics.

This kind of wrestling-as-bloody-spectacle is not new, said Mike Lano, Berkeley-based wrestling journalist, photographer and historian who has been covering the sport for 40 years. With Hough he’ll be presenting the film at the PFA next week. In the 1970s in Memphis, TN "garbage wrestling" became popular on the circuit, involving garbage cans and dirty tricks. Lano said this kind of hardcore wrestling settled in Japan during the 80s and came back into American professional wrestling when promoter "Cactus Jack" brought it to Philadelphia in 1993.

Wrestling is, of course, more of a choreographed performance than a contest. "A lot of wrestlers are a team, and they are protecting each other," said Lano. The boys in the backyard have agreed to hurt each other. Although they can imitate what they see the pros doing, they don’t know how to protect each other from serious harm.

The kids tell the camera that they are only inflicting surface damage – just a little blood, but nothing seriously crippling. In England, a group of boys taping their wrestling exploits surreptitiously use razors to cut their foreheads so that blood pours over their faces for the camera. One, while talking to Hough, had a rivulet of blood streaming down his face. "I hit a vein, obviously."

Lano said there has been no documented case of an amateur backyard wrestler being maimed or crippled. Nevertheless, he predicted "someone is going to die. They’re not properly trained."

Professional wrestler Rob Van Dam is featured in the film at his home. Although he deplores the potential for serious harm these kids are putting upon themselves, the backyard is clearly a place where there is a lot of enthusiasm for wrestling. Some proud parents say in the film that backyard wrestling is a show that the boys put together and promote on their own, which is better than them doing drugs or crimes.

While watching the film the question looming over the viewer is “Why?” Why would kids want their friends to break glass over their heads, or to stomp thumbtacks into their arms, or scrap a cheese grater across their foreheads? At the end of the film Hough offers an explanation from one of the Gates brothers, who confesses that his father abused them so now violence is oddly comforting.

That explanation, though, doesn’t ring true. When Hough asked the kids to explain themselves, their answers are stiff and forced. The truer answer seems to come from the images of the teens at play. The howls of approval at a particularly gory stunt and high-fives and the excitement of putting on a good show for the camera are the more convincing reasons why.

Like slam dancing at a punk rock show or getting into a bar fight, amateur wrestling violence seems to be part of a young person’s aggressive energy (not exclusively male – there are girls doing this, too). The backyard barbed wire pit is another outlet for it, modeled after the professional hardcore style.

Lano said the World Wrestling Federation recently retired its hardcore wrestling shows; amateur garbage wrestling is on the decline. "It’s grown in periods when wrestling is really cool," said Lano. As amateur wrestling lives by the sword of professional popularity, it also dies by it. "The business is very cyclical. Right now is the worst down cycle. It’s not cool."

Last season, Berkeley High was within 24 minutes of winning the Alameda-Contra Costa Athletic League title. Tied 7-7 at halftime of the regular-season finale against Pinole Valley, the Yellowjackets collapsed and ended up losing 35-14. This year, the Jackets hope they will have the staying power to outlast the Spartans and several other contenders.

Berkeley is the league’s deepest team, with backups that could start at most other ACCAL schools at nearly every skill position. The only real questionmark, however, comes at the most important position – quarterback.

The battle to take snaps for Berkeley is a two-way battle between juniors Jeff Spellman and Foster Goree. Spellman, a transfer from Bishop O’Dowd High in Oakland, is the more polished of the two, while Goree is more familiar with the Berkeley offensive system after starting for the junior varsity last season. Goree looked fairly impressive during a scrimmage last week, while Spellman sat out as he waited for his eligibility to be confirmed, which it was late this week.

While the two quarterbacks are similar in athletic ability and neither has stepped forward to claim the starting job yet, there are no plans to play both on a regular basis. Head coach Matt Bissell and offensive coordinator Clarence Johnson agree that a platoon system isn’t the ideal situation when it comes to running a team.

“We really want to use one guy,” Johnson said. “That’s the one position where you can’t split time. It’s not good for either kid, and it’s not good for the team.”

Whoever ends up behind center will have a plethora of weapons to utilize. The Yellowjackets are stacked at tailback once again, with Craig Hollis ready to step in as the main runner after backing up 1,000-yard rusher Germaine Baird last season. But Chris Watson is another talented back and could force his way into the lineup at some point this season. Hollis averaged 10 yards per carry last season but must prove he can be the feature back behind a line anchored by twins Anthony and Ray Cole.

Berkeley also boasts great talent at wide receiver. Senior Sean Young averaged more than 25 yards per catch last season as the main deep threat. Young has committed to play at Cal next season and is looking to have a big year before heading east to Memorial Stadium. But Young will have to do more than just run down the sidelines this season, as neither quarterback has the arm strength of last year’s starter, Raymond Pinkston. Both Young and fellow wideout Roberto McBean will have to work on crossing routes in order o get the ball on a regular basis.

One benefit of Berkeley’s huge student body is having a lot of student bodies in uniform. Berkeley is one of the few teams that doesn’t need to have players going both ways, giving the Jackets an advantage in both fatigue and practice time. The only player who will start on both sides of the ball is Rodny Jones, a 6-foot-5 athlete who will see time at both tight end and defensive end. Jones has the potential to be a big factor on offense as an underneath option to Young and McBean, as does senior Robert Hunter-Ford, who will also play defensive end. Both have the physical talent to be impact players, and coaches say they have improved their mental games since last season.

“I see good things happening with those guys,” Bissell said. “Rob has shown that he now has the mental aspect of being a good player. As long as he’s motivated he’ll be a force for us.”

The heart of the Berkeley defense will be middle linebacker Owen Goldstrom, a first-team all-league pick last season along with defensive tackle Myron Seals. If 290-pound tackle Jamal Lucas-Johnson can stay healthy this season, the Jackets will be solid up the middle.

The talent just keeps on coming in the secondary, headed by cornerback Justin Cain. If Spellman doesn’t end up as the quarterback, he will see time at safety. With eight returning starters, Bissell is counting on the defense to carry the offense while the quarterback situation works itself out.

Bissell will try to avoid the academic pitfalls of last season as the Jackets lost several key starters for the Pinole Valley game due to grades. As a first-year coach he went through some growing pains while learning the ins and outs of the system, and he expects this year’s team to be more successful the in the classroom. But a lot of that is up to the players.

“We’re talking about a situation where we’re trying to reverse a trend that’s been growing for a while,” Bissell said. “There’s a culture where mediocrity in the classroom is acceptable. We’re trying to instill the idea that striving for a C is not acceptable.”

Even if all the players stay eligible, it won’t be easy to take down Pinole Valley, which has claimed three league titles in a row. Although stud running back DeAndre McFarland is gone, the Spartans are loaded once again with a huge offensive line and big-play receiver Thomas DeCoud. Pinole Valley will be dealing with a coaching change, as Steve Alameda takes over for longtime head man Jim Erickson. El Cerrito and De Anza also return some talented players, while Alameda, Encinal and newcomer Hercules will try to climb into the top of the standings.

“Pinole Valley is the top dog,” Bissell said. “The championship goes through them until somebody beats them.”

Berkeley will only play nine games this season, as the scheduled season opener against Mission San Jose was canceled when the school decided to disband its varsity program.

Berkeley officials say they will move ahead with an ordinance that would protect consumers’ personal financial information, despite a lawsuit challenging similar laws in San Mateo County and Daly City.

Wells Fargo and Bank of America filed suit in a San Francisco federal court Tuesday alleging that the existing San Mateo County and Daly City ordinances, which fine financial institutions for sharing consumer information without customers’ consent, violate federal law.

The filing came just hours before the Berkeley City Council asked the city manager’s office Tuesday night to develop a similar ordinance based on the San Mateo County model.

Councilmember Betty Olds said the city will watch the lawsuit carefully, but plans to move forward with its own ordinance.“It’s privacy,” she said. “Nothing makes us madder than having our financial secrets passed around.”

Assistant City Attorney Zach Cowan said it was too early to determine how the case might effect Berkeley’s ordinance, but said it will likely have an influence on how the measure is drafted.

“I’m sure it’s relevant, and when we get there, we get there,” he said.

Wells Fargo and Bank of America spokespeople said it is too early to determine whether they would pursue legal action against Berkeley or other local governments that pass financial privacy measures in the coming months.

The city of San Francisco and Marin, Alameda and Contra Costa counties are considering similar ordinances.

Under existing federal law, financial institutions may share or sell consumer information unless customers sign a document opting out. The San Mateo and Daly City ordinances prevent companies within their borders from sharing information unless customers opt in. Violations result in fines of up to $250,000.

Daly City passed its ordinance after the financial services industry spent more than $10 million on lobbying and campaign contributions to defeat a similar statewide measure drafted by state Sen. Jackie Speier, D-San Mateo.

Spokespeople for Wells Fargo and Bank of America said their companies already have privacy policies that prohibit them from sharing consumers’ financial information with other institutions.

They said the banks filed suit because the local ordinances make it difficult for them to share customer information with their own affiliates and provide quality customer service.

For example, said Wells Fargo spokesperson Donna Uchida, the ordinances may prevent the company’s banking operation from telling its credit card operation that a customer is in solid financial standing and is deserving of a credit card.

City Councilmember Dona Spring said the Berkeley ordinance would allow companies to share information within their own walls.

“We have no interest in regulating banks other than protecting consumers,” she said.

Uchida also raised concerns about scattered municipalities passing different ordinances.

“We believe the patchwork approach... s going to confuse customers and create havoc in the marketplace,” she said.

Berkeley Mayor Shirley Dean raised similar concerns about a hodgepodge approach, arguing that the issue would best be handled on the state level.

“What I would hate to see would be a lot of ordinances that are quite different,” she said.

If local government does address the issue, she said, it should be done on a countywide level to ensure greater uniformity.

But Jennette Gayer, consumer associate with the California Public Interest Research Group in Los Angeles, said local governments should take up the issue.

“If the state can’t get it done, then local government should get it done,” she said.

Gayer said a growing number of local laws would put increasing pressure on financial institutions to cave in to statewide consumer protections.

Tom Casey, San Mateo County Counsel, said he was confident that the county’s ordinance is legal under federal law and said he would “vigorously defend” the measure.

For all you patriotic folk out there who are gung-ho for a Middle East colonizing war, my question is, “When are you leaving?” And when you get there will you even realize your enemy is also you?

Traditionally, the most enthusiastic are those who stay safety at home while the young and impressionable, lacking wisdom but possessing raging hormones, are sent to give their lives to fight lunatic wars.

So, stand first in line but don’t push. Hopefully you’ll return more enlightened, but not in a body bag.

LOS ANGELES — An amateur astronomer hunting for asteroids may have discovered a piece of the rocket that launched the Apollo 12 astronauts to the moon in 1969, a NASA scientist said Thursday.

The object was first spied on Sept. 3 by Arizona astronomer Bill Yeung. Follow-up observations and calculations of its path suggest it is orbiting the Earth once every 48 days at a distance twice that of the moon.

Although initially believed to be an asteroid, astronomers now suspect it is a rocket fragment, possibly the third stage of the massive Saturn V launched Nov. 14, 1969, with astronauts Charles “Pete” Conrad Jr., Richard F. Gordon and Alan L. Bean aboard.

“It’s a detective story and we’re looking at the evidence here,” said Paul Chodas, an astronomer at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Complex orbit calculations suggest the fragment, which stands nearly 59 feet tall, was captured into Earth orbit in April, explaining why it had not been spotted before. Prior to this spring, the rocket stage had likely spent three decades orbiting the sun, Chodas said.

On the Apollo 8 through 12 missions, NASA designed the third stage, which boosted the astronauts from Earth orbit toward the moon, to sail past Earth’s lone natural satellite.

That close passage by the moon was designed to swing the stage into solar orbit and away from Earth.

The first four times, it worked perfectly, but NASA engineers made an error on Apollo 12, leaving the third stage stranded in Earth orbit. Eventually, in the early 1970s, it drifted from the Earth’s bounds and began orbiting the sun.

In April, the Earth apparently snagged it back, Chodas said.

Looking forward, NASA astronomers said there is a 20 percent chance the rocket will end up hitting the moon — as did the third stages of the Apollo 13 through 17 missions.

There is also a 3 percent chance it could strike Earth, as did some Apollo stages in the 1960s. Most of the rocket body would burn up in the atmosphere, although some pieces could survive the fiery re-entry, Chodas said.

In the past, astronomers have suspected other near-Earth bodies are actually Apollo rocket fragments. None has been confirmed, Chodas said.

When a football team loses three players who gained 70 percent of its yards the previous season, there’s usually not much room for optimism. So why is St. Mary’s High head coach Jay Lawson so upbeat about the upcoming season?

“I feel better heading into this season than I did last year,” Lawson said. “We’ve got a lot of talent coming back.”

While tailback Trestin George and receivers Chase Moore and Courtney Brown have taken their prodigious talents to college campuses, Lawson has the rest of his offense back, including quarterback Steve Murphy, who went through on-the-job training last season after moving behind center two months before the first game.

Lawson, who took over as head coach last season, also welcomes back nine varsity linemen, an amazing number considering he will only carry 28 players on his roster. Even the loss of 280-pound junior Jon Taranto to a knee injury in a scrimmage doesn’t hurt too much with so many experienced linemen in the fold.

Leading the charge on in the trenches will be 6-foot-6, 290-pound Leon Drummer, who has verbally committed to play at Cal next season. Drummer is following closely in the footsteps of current Cal sophomore Lorenzo Alexander, who ended his St. Mary’s career with All-America honors. Drummer has the potential to do the same and should dominate on both sides of the ball.

Taranto’s injury did put an end to plans to play 275-pound Jarrell Booker next to Drummer on the left side of the offensive line, a sight that would have made any defensive lineman weak-kneed. Booker will switch over to the right side, providing Murphy with the biggest bookends in the Bay Area to protect him in the pocket. Throw in 260-pound Ed Cheveres and the Panthers shouldn’t have to worry much about opposing linemen getting a big push.

The line will need to be strong following the graduation of George, who ended his St. Mary’s career with the school rushing and scoring records. Junior Fred Hives steps into George’s XXL-sized shoes, but he’s not as fast or explosive as his predecessor. Hives should excel running between the tackles, however, with a bruising running style.

“We’re definitely going to run the ball inside more with Fred,” Lawson said. “Behind our linemen, Fred could be just as productive as Trestin.”

Murphy should be much-improved this season, although he was impressive during the latter stages of last season while throwing 10 touchdowns to just two interceptions. Murphy is the unquestioned leader of the offense and has tightened his throwing motion. His improved pocket presence, combined with his speed, should make him one of the Bay Area’s top run-throw threats.

“Murphy will be huge for us this year,” Lawson said. “He’s really improved his intangibles. By the end of last season, he was leading the team really well, and he’s a dramatically improved player.”

Sophomore Scott Tully will also get some snaps this season as Lawson grooms him to take over when Murphy graduates. Tully is a prototypical pocket passer at 6-foot-3 and has a stronger arm than Murphy. When St. Mary’s gets out to a comfortable lead Murphy will shift into the backfield with Tully at quarterback.

The main target in the passing game will be wideout Ryan Coogler, a speed-burner who made some big plays last season. The senior, also an outstanding track performer, will provide a deep threat to keep defenses honest. Nick Osborn moves from the interior line to take over for Moore at tight end. While not as athletic as Moore, Osborn is a better blocker and a big target for Murphy on short routes.

With only 28 players, Lawson obviously needs most of his talented players to go both ways. Drummer and Booker will anchor the defensive line, while Coogler and Murphy will play cornerback. Murphy is a major-college prospect as a defensive back, where he was the Most Valuable Defensive Player at Cal’s summer camp.

“I like to play both positions as much as possible,” Murphy said. “I’ll end up being a cornerback in college, but quarterback is probably more important to the team right now.”

Lawson will balance Murphy’s offensive leadership with his defensive playmaking, along with his other two-way players. The Panthers actually had fewer varsity players last season, so there should be more chances to give Lawson’s stars a breather during games this year.

“I think we’ve got enough players this year that we should be able to give guys a few series off in every game,” Lawson said.

The Panthers have a tough non-league schedule, with games against Oakland Tech, McClymonds and El Cerrito. The biggest test comes today, however, in powerful Bishop O’Dowd, a traditional rival from back in the days of the old ACCAL. The game, which was originally scheduled for Saturday at El Cerrito High’s field, was moved to St. Mary’s due to a field conflict. The Dragons downed St. Mary’s, 27-6, to start last season at O’Dowd’s field in Oakland, so the Panthers are anxious to get a shot at revenge.

“I’ve been waiting for this game since they beat us last year,” Murphy said. “We’ve been working all summer to beat them.”

St. Mary’s is the consensus favorite in the Bay Shore Athletic League, which the Panthers won with a dramatic last-minute win over rival Piedmont last season. Piedmont will look to emphasize the running game after losing quarterback Drew Olson to UCLA, where he played a key role in the Bruins’ comeback win over Colorado State last week. John Swett and St. Patrick could also challenge for the league title.

Just hours before New Yorkers commemorated the one-year anniversary of last year’s attacks Wednesday, city councilmembers Tuesday night adopted a resolution condemning the Sept. 11-inspired legislation.

“Under the Patriot Act, agencies like the FBI or state police or John Ashcroft can detain people whenever they want. And detainees are not given any opportunity to defend themselves,” said Councilmember Kriss Worthington, author of the Berkeley resolution.

A lack of due process and a violation of civil liberties were the reasons behind council’s opposition, Worthington said.

Federal legislators, though, who passed the bill last October with bipartisan support, claim that expanded authority granted to law enforcement officials under the PATRIOT Act are critical to national security in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Despite Berkeley’s unanimous decision to condemn the legislation, most Americans support the PATRIOT Act, said UC visiting instructor Dab Schnur of the political science department.“Council’s vote serves to illuminate how far out of the mainstream Berkeley has become,” he said.

Coming on the eve of Sept. 11, Schnur added that the vote contained irony and a “peculiar charm.”

For Worthington, though, the decision was within the nation’s spirit on the attack’s one-year anniversary.

“It’s patriotic to stand up for our values and defend our civil rights,” he said.

Before the resolution’s passage, Councilmember Polly Armstrong led efforts to water down the city’s condemnation. Two clauses in Worthington’s original draft were struck, and city opposition was narrowed to “parts of” the PATRIOT Act instead of deploring the entire piece of legislation.

“I doubt anyone on council has even read the whole thing,” Armstrong said. She also said that the two sections removed from the original proposal were ambiguous.

All council members seemed pleased, and many surprised, by the unanimous decision to adopt the condemning resolution.

“It was very unusual for us,” said Councilmember Betty Olds.

Among other things, the PATRIOT Act gives law agencies more power to detain immigrants, conduct wiretaps and monitor the Internet.

Schnur said it was unlikely that Berkeley’s resolution against such federal policies would have any impact.

Shirley Dean has been on the Berkeley City Council for over 16 years, and now that she’s running for re-election as mayor, she suddenly has become interested in creating more playing fields, even though she knows there’s practically no room left for laying fields in our city. But wait, she says, there’s our waterfront, which is being transformed into a new Eastshore State Park. “We might start by eliminating some of the huge parking lots that are planned.”

Surely you know, Mrs. Dean, that “huge parking lots are not being planned, and that any incremental increase in parking spaces would barely accommodate the current uses of the waterfront, let alone large new playing fields.

So why is Mrs. Dean willing to take on the Sierra Club and other environmental groups with this nonsolution? My guess is that she figures these organizations will probably support her challenger, Tom Bates, since his credentials as a conservationists are impeccable and he was the prime mover in the State Assembly for the creation of the Eastshore State Park. So why not make a play for the soccer moms and dads? What is there to lose?

While clerical workers sat down to discuss contracts with UC administrators Thursday – the first meeting since last month’s three-day strike – negotiators had at least one additional worry on their minds.

Another campus union may be making the job of negotiating a pay raise for clericals, represented by the Coalition of University Employees (CUE), more difficult.

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), which represents service workers on campus, has a contract with the university. It gives its employees a raise if other union employees get raises. Known as a “me-too” clause, the AFSCME provision, according to AFSCME officials, goes into effect if either the Coalition of University Employees’ clericals or certain technical and health care workers on campus get more than a 2 percent raise for fiscal year 2001-2002.

The me-too clause means that CUE is essentially bargaining for two unions – itself and AFSCME, union officials said. If CUE is successful in getting its desired 15 percent pay raise, which would cost the university $100 million over two years, the university would be forced to shell out additional millions for AFSCME employees.

CUE, which represents 1,900 telephone operators, childcare workers, administrative assistants and other clerical workers at UC Berkeley, is pushing for its pay raise over two years. But UC is sticking to its offer of 3.5 percent over a two-year period. After months of negotiations, neither side has shown much flexibility.

President of Local 3 of CUE Michael-David Sasson said that the me-too clause hurts CUE’s bargaining position enough so that the union has moved to file a complaint with the state Public Employment Relations Board asking the me-too clause to be voided.

The negotiations impact 18,000 clerical workers throughout the UC system.

"One of [CUE’s] unfair practices was that the university had agreed to another contract with another party to language that effectively tied their hands in relationship with us," Sasson said.

But UC spokesperson Paul Schwartz denied that the “me-too” clause pertained to salary negotiations with CUE.

Schwartz said the university’s position that a raise of 2 percent for the 2001-2002 fiscal year – part of the two-year 3.5 percent offer – is the only workable proposal. A 2 percent raise would not activate the “me-too” clause in the AFSCME contract, according to union officials.

CUE employees have been without a contract since November 2001 and raises are expected to be paid retroactively for the 2001-2002 fiscal year. State budget cuts have limited what UC can offer, Schwartz said.

AFSCME officials downplayed the harm done to CUE because of the “me-too” clause. They said the clause fosters fellowship between them.

"A ‘me-too’ clause assures that low-wage workers won’t be pitted against each other," a spokesperson said.

Margy Wilkinson, CUE’s lead negotiator, said that the provision only applies to across-the-board increases, otherwise known as cost-of-living increases, and could be circumvented through other types of raises.

“There are many other things that the university could offer us that would not bring that into play,’ she said. “They could make adjustments without invoking the language in the AFSCME contract, including the one thing we’ve talked about a lot — merit increases.”

The clerical workers represented by CUE were once represented by AFSCME, and though the recent strike illustrated solidarity among campus unions, the struggle for representation caused conflict in the mid ’90s.

CUE was formed in 1995 as an alternative to AFSCME.

“It wasn’t responsive to us and the contracts were consistently weak,” said David Kessler, a longtime library assistant at Bancroft Library who was once represented by AFSCME. “AFSCME was interested in harmony with UC and collecting dues. They were after labor peace, not labor justice,” he said.

As one who has developed housing in Berkeley since 1972, I dispute the self-serving arguments attributed to the developers in the Daily Planet’s article “More trouble over housing” (Aug. 31).

The taxpayers of Berkeley have been the victims of numerous spending scams since the Rads took over the city in 1984. Much of the problem is based on the fallacious notion that a nonprofit entity is inherently good. The mafia and al-Qaida are nonprofit entities. Neither has ever declared a profit or paid taxes on income. Nonprofits are often tax dodges that prey on gullible liberals. Instead of paying taxes on income, the nonprofit disguises the income as fees, salaries and expense accounts.

For a number of years the taxpayers of Berkeley have been subsidizing nonprofits and related developers who claim they are building “affordable housing” due to Berkeley’s supposed “critical housing shortage” (quotes from the article).

There is no housing shortage in Berkeley, critical or otherwise. With the demise of the dot-coms and the freeing of rents in vacated units, there is a serious surplus of housing in Berkeley. This surplus will only grow because of overconstruction of housing in surrounding areas and vacancy decontrol within Berkeley. There is no ideological justification any longer for Berkeley taxpayers to subsidize developers.

OS ANGELES — A judge Thursday threw out a politically damaging $78 million civil fraud verdict against GOP gubernatorial candidate Bill Simon’s family investment firm, ruling that William E. Simon & Sons and other investors were the fraud victims.

Superior Court Judge James C. Chalfant, in a written ruling, dismissed the huge compensatory and punitive damages verdict against William E. Simon & Sons and a nearly $20 million verdict also levied by a jury against another investor group.

“This decision is of course inconsistent with the jury’s verdict,” Chalfant wrote. “The court believes in the jury system and has found that juries usually reach the same decision that the court would. Not this time.”

Simon, who faces Democratic Gov. Gray Davis in the November election, had maintained that the July 30 jury verdict would not stand.

“Today is a new beginning for our campaign,” Simon told a press conference packed with supporters at a hotel near the courthouse an hour after the verdict was thrown out.

“I have said all along that the jury verdict was fundamentally flawed and would be overturned and that’s exactly what happened this morning,” he said. “Now the people of California will get the kind of campaign, at least from me, they deserve.”

A half-dozen protesters chanted “We believe the jury” outside the Omni Los Angeles Hotel and carried signs reading “It took a Wilson judge.” Chalfant was appointed the bench by former Gov. Pete Wilson, a Republican.

The jury had awarded the huge verdicts to Edward Paul Hindelang of Santa Barbara, a convicted marijuana smuggler who founded Pacific Coin, a Van Nuys pay phone company in which Simon’s firm and others invested.

“It’s hard to know what the judge was going to do and this was certainly an option that we considered. It simply sets up the final phase on appeal,” Thomas said.

Simon was not personally named in the lawsuit, but with corporate wrongdoing in the spotlight the fraud verdict was political poison that stunned the GOP and struck at a key theme of Simon’s first-time candidacy, his boasts of private-sector success.

The verdict became another setback for his stumbling campaign, spooking donors and becoming the focus of a Davis attack ad that remains on the air.

The lawsuit arose from a 1998 acquisition of Pacific Coin by investors including William E. Simon & Sons, the New Jersey and California firm Simon started with his brother and father, a former U.S. Treasury secretary.

Hindelang had served 30 months in prison in the early 1980s, but the investors didn’t know that at the time, they said.

The investors planned to grow Pacific Coin, but with the pay phone market shrinking, the company faltered, fell into debt and was seized by its lenders in December 2000.

That same month Hindelang sued Simon & Sons, alleging the investors defrauded him by concealing a perilous and ultimately failed plan to take Pacific Coin public and make huge profits.

The investors countersued, accusing Hindelang of committing fraud and costing them millions by hiding his troubled drug past. Simon & Sons invested $16.5 million in Pacific Coin and lost it all, and Simon personally lost $1.2 million.

Jurors found unanimously for Hindelang and awarded him $65 million in punitive damages and $13.3 million in compensatory damages from Simon & Sons. The other investor, B-R Investors, was assessed $10.9 million in punitive damages and $8.9 million in compensatory damages.

In his 36-page ruling, Chalfant wrote that it was “an immutable fact established by overwhelming evidence that Hindelang defrauded” the investors by failing to disclose his criminal convictions, his negotiations with federal authorities to forfeit drug proceeds and that Pacific Coin may have been founded with drug money.

The judge wrote that investors’ testimony “that they never would have invested $26 million in Pacific Coin had they known the truth was uncontradicted and undisputable, underscoring the magnitude of Hindelang’s fraud.”

The judge awarded the investors $125,000 to cover costs they paid for investigations of Hindelang.

If Willard Pool and/or West Campus Pool closes this winter, why not arrange with Berkeley Unified School District to invite displaced swimmers to both south and north pools at Berkeley High School as appropriate? If BHS again decides to use its north pool (due to the closing of Willard) then the public still should be able to use north during hours when the kids aren’t there.

Berkeley swim programs at BHS for the public employ two lifeguards while one guard at the other pools seems to be sufficient. These two should be enough to survey both north and south pools at BHS if they’re open during the same hours. (There is a connecting door that is usually open.) This means the extra cost to the city for running two pools rather than one would be much less trifling and certainly less than operating three pools, and should be a bargain for everyone.

OAKLAND – Alameda County Registrar of Voters Brad Clark has announced a series of demonstrations this month designed to allow voters to become acquainted with new electronic touchscreen voting equipment.

Demonstrations of the new voting technology are scheduled to take place throughout the month at public libraries across Alameda County.

County staff members will be available to show how the new equipment works as well as provide election information, voter registration forms and information on enlisting as a poll worker in Alameda County.

Anyone interested in having a demonstration of the new equipment at a festival or for any group should call the registrar of voters' office at 272-6948.

ALAMEDA – A defense attorney for suspended Oakland Raiders football player Darrell Russell said this afternoon that her client has been vindicated by a prosecutor's decision to drop all the sexual assault charges he had been facing in Alameda County Superior Court.

Russell, 26, had been accused of 25 felony sex charges for allegedly drugging a 28-year-old Sunnyvale woman in late January and videotaping two of his friends having sex with her in what prosecutors charged as rape.

The football player was in court this afternoon in Alameda for a continuation of his preliminary hearing. But instead of having his case put over for trial, Russell heard prosecutors call for a dismissal of all charges.

“He's very appreciative that the district attorney was willing to reexamine the evidence with the principle of justice in mind,'' defense attorney Cris Arguedas said.

“There was insufficient evidence to convict. That has been our position all along,'' the attorney said. “When the prosecution put on its case and it was challenged by the defense, it fell apart. There was no credible evidence to believe these crimes were committed.''

Attorneys for the defendants had accused the woman, a model who appeared topless in Playboy magazine, of making false rape claims against Russell, a two-time Pro Bowler, in the hopes of collecting millions of dollars from the football player, who was suspended from the NFL after testing positive for the drug Ecstasy.

Prosecutor Kevin Murphy rested his case in the preliminary hearing of evidence in June after showing a graphic videotape of the disputed sexual encounter in which Hayes and Perry had sex with the woman while Russell operated the camera.

The woman and prosecutors claimed she was drugged while the defense said the woman consented to have sex with them.

FREMONT — Cecilia Chang says she used to look the other way when people talked about “heavy stuff” — civil liberties, constitutional rights, discrimination.

Now she carries a stack of petitions, cajoling signatures from strangers to bolster a presidential pardon campaign for her friend Wen Ho Lee, the Taiwanese-American scientist once suspected of spying against the United States. Two years ago on Friday — Sept. 13, 2000 — Lee was freed from nine months of solitary confinement as the investigation around him crumbled.

While convicted on a single count of copying sensitive nuclear weapons data, Lee received an apology from a federal judge for his treatment. The activism his case inspired continues to flourish in Chang, along with many other Asian-Americans who have no personal connection to Lee.

“It was really a watershed moment in terms of Asian-Americans coming of age,” said Karen Narasaki, president of the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium in Washington. “For the first time, you had Asian-American professionals thinking about criminal justice and the issue of whether the government is always right.”

In Fremont, Chang has started a new group inspired by the Lee case, Justice for New Americans. In Sacramento, activist Ivy Lee created the Chinese American Political Action Committee, which has about 30 members. And in Detroit, Marie-Ange Weng formed the Council of Asian Pacific Americans, a coalition of organizations with about 1,000 members.

The 731 acres along the state-designated Wild and Scenic South Yuba River was acquired from Sierra Pacific Industries for $3.56 million by the Trust for Public Land, which will sell it to the state for the same price as soon as Proposition 40 funds become available, said trust spokeswoman Mary Menees.

Voters approved the bond initiative in March, “and this important acquisition is already delivering on its promise,” state Resources Secretary Mary Nichols said in a statement.

The property will expand popular South Yuba River State Park.

The purchase was made with a low-interest loan from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

The trust plans to repay the loan with the Proposition 40 money, along with contributions it is seeking with help from the Sierra Fund and the South Yuba River Citizens League.

The groups praised Sierra Pacific Industries for not logging the site for more than two years, even after a land-exchange agreement expired in December 2000.

The Anderson-based company now will use the money to buy timberland elsewhere.

The sale “reflects our commitment to creating a balance between wild land preservation, economic investment and responsible forest management,” company President A.A. “Red” Emmerson said in a statement.

The land sale is part of an umbrella agreement announced last summer in which the trust plans to buy and preserve up to 30,000 acres of Sierra Pacific’s timberland.

The trust, the U.S. Forest Service and other groups are trying to convince the timber giant to sell, trade or otherwise safeguard land it is preparing to log along a section of the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail.

The timber stands on its land northwest of Lake Tahoe, near Sierra City.

SAN FRANCISCO — Online powerhouse Yahoo Inc. and regional phone giant SBC Communications Inc. on Friday will unveil a high-speed Internet service designed to convince more people that broadband is worth the extra money.

Sunnyvale-based Yahoo and San Antonio-based SBC have been working on the service since they joined forced last year. The new service, available in all 13 states where SBC provides phone service, will allow subscribers to surf the Web at speeds up to 25 times as fast as traditional dial-up modems.

The new service’s content is supposed to be just as big of a selling point as its speed. Yahoo has developed a souped-up version of its popular Web page that will provide subscribers with a wide range of exclusive entertainment options and other applications unavailable anywhere else.

“We have been programming to the lowest common denominator until now,” said Jim Brock, a Yahoo senior vice president who oversaw the project. “This is going to change the broadband landscape.”

The alliance between Yahoo and SBC stems from a recognition that the fast speeds and “always on” connections provided by broadband aren’t enough to persuade most people to dig deeper into their pockets to pay for the service.

“Broadband adoption is going to have to be content driven,” said industry analyst Mark Kersey of the La Jolla research firm ARS Inc. “There has to be something available on broadband that people can’t get on dial-up before people will pay more.”

The average monthly charge for a digital subscriber line — one of the most widely used forms of broadband — is $51.36, according to ARS. The average monthly price for a high-speed cable modem is $45.31, ARS said.

In contrast, the most popular dial-up services charge $20 to $24 a month.

To promote their new service, Yahoo and SBC will offer promotional discounts of $29.95 to $39.95 per month, depending on which of three transmission speeds a subscriber wants. After six months, the subscription rate will become $42.95 to $59.95 per month.

The companies are confident price won’t discourage subscribers.

“This will bring broadband to the masses,” predicted Jason Few, an SBC vice president overseeing the new Yahoo service. Subscribers should be able to launch the service within a week of signing up, Few said.

Yahoo and SBC aren’t the first formidable partners to enter the broadband market with lofty ambitions.

Microsoft’s MSN service and regional phone carrier Qwest Communication last year rolled out a high-speed Internet service that hasn’t made a significant dent in the market, Kersey said.

The broadband market has been growing steadily, but not at the rapid clip that telecommunication providers envisioned when they made huge investments in broadband networks during the late 1990s.

There’s about 15.2 million broadband subscribers today, up from 9.1 million a year ago, ARS said.

The new Yahoo and SBC service will have a big customer base to build upon.

SBC has about 35 million residential customers in California, Texas, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Connecticut and Nevada. The company already has 1.7 million broadband subscribers and 1.6 million customers with dial-up Internet services.

Yahoo is counting on the new broadband service to help it recover from the dot-com bust that wiped out a large chunk of its advertising revenue. The company has been trying to sell more fee-based services under a new management team led by former Hollywood executive Terry Semel.

“We view this as a foundation for developing compelling subscription products,” Brock said.

SAN FRANCISCO — The Internet digital photo site Webshots seemed destined to dissolve in the dot-com meltdown a year ago as its owner, ExciteAtHome, prepared to go bankrupt.

But Webshots’ co-founders lobbied for another try at developing the site into a profitable business — a goal that doesn’t look as farfetched as it appeared when ExciteAtHome was poised to pull the plug.

About 150,000 new users register at Webshots each week, up 50 percent from a year ago. More importantly, a significant number of those users are subscribing to the site’s premium services, an about-face from the carefree days when At Home gave away everything for free.

“We have a better sense as businessmen what this space is all about now,” said Narendra Rocherolle, one of the three Webshots co-founders who bought the site back from ExciteAtHome eight months ago at pennies on the dollar.

Redwood City-based Webshots is among a handful of nearly dead Internet businesses trying to reincarnate themselves under new management teams.

Gone is the giddiness of the bubble years; it’s been replaced by a no-nonsense approach.

“We’ve put the crack pipe away,” said Chris Kitze, who invested $9 million of his dot-com fortune to revive Wine.com, one of the Web’s biggest busts, with a strategy that mostly promotes the sale of premium wines.

“It used to be all about getting the ’first mover’ advantage on the Internet. Now that people have become more rational and sane, there is an understanding that it’s all about becoming the last man standing.”

It’s been an excruciating education for some businesses on the comeback trial.

To get its second shot, high-speed Internet connections supplier Yipes Enterprise Services went bankrupt in April after burning through nearly $300 million in venture capital. The San Francisco company had approached dozens of suitors to sell out to, but couldn’t find a white knight.

SACRAMENTO — A boom in the number of college-age students and laid-off workers means enrollment at California’s community colleges is skyrocketing.

But the spike in enrollment — the largest in 12 years — has not been met by an equal increase in state money.

Roughly 20 of the 108 campuses have already cut classes, despite swelling enrollment. And with a bleak state budget outlook in years to come, college officials worry it will only get worse.

Community College Chancellor Thomas Nussbaum announced this week the number of students attending state community colleges has climbed by more than 115,000, or about 6.9 percent, compared to last year. Nearly 3 million students attended California community colleges last year.

“Our main concern is that we are not going to be able to serve all of them in the future,” Nussbaum said, adding the funding shortage could mean fee increases next year. At $11 per credit, California currently has the lowest community college fees in the nation.

Part of the problem, school officials say, is the formula that connect enrollment and funding. Under the state’s master plan — a 1960s education blueprint that guarantees every student the right to go to college — community colleges are obligated to accept every person who has a high school or general education diploma.

But the state only increases funding up to a maximum of 3 percent above the previous year’s enrollment. This year’s state budget included a $118.7 million increase for California’s community colleges, which equals a little more than $1,000 per additional student.

Community colleges already get significantly less than any other public school system or university, according to Mark Wallace, spokesman for the chancellor’s office.

On average, the University of California receives nearly $27,000 per student in state funding, California State University gets $10,905 per student, and community colleges receive $4,690 per student, Wallace said.

“There’s a concern nationally that community colleges are not being funded adequately to keep the supply of workers flowing into the economy,” said Sharon Tate, dean at East Los Angeles Community College. “We need to have some equity in the funding formula.”

East Los Angeles College, which has 10.25 percent more students so far this year and could see an increase of up to 30 percent, had to cut courses and increase the average number of students per class.

Jason Delgado, 20, a student at Sacramento City College, said he has noticed larger class sizes this year, but said he didn’t have any trouble getting into the courses he needed.

“I lucked out and had teachers that were willing to take more students than the required amount,” he said. “We brought chairs in from other rooms, and some students were sitting on desks, but it worked out.”

WASHINGTON — A California lawmaker said a symbolic argument having nothing to do with water is holding up his critical water bill.

CalFed, a program to restore the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, would get $3 billion if the bill sponsored by Rep. Ken Calvert is passed. The delta provides drinking water for two-thirds of the state and irrigation water for Central Valley crops.

Calvert, R-Corona, has been trying to get the legislation to the House floor since March. After he helped resolve disputes over water deliveries to Central Valley farmers and a grant program for other western water projects, Calvert now says the bill is being held hostage by an argument over federal labor law.

At least two other bills to clean polluted waterways and improve railroad tracks used by freight trains are being delayed by the same argument, according to House Democratic leaders.

The argument is over the Davis-Bacon provision that guarantees high wages for workers on federal construction projects. Democrats on the House Resources Committee, along with a few pro-labor Republicans, tacked it on to the CalFed bill last fall.

House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, told Republicans in the spring that he would not allow a vote on any bill that has the wage language in it.

“It’s adding unnecessary cost that otherwise might save the taxpayer money,” said Greg Crist, Armey’s spokesman. “It makes no sense to pay more in a way that’s arbitrarily set.”

On the other side are labor unions and their supporters in Congress.

“We are perplexed as to why any member of the committee would have opposed this amendment,” wrote Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, and Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., in a report accompanying the bill. “The Davis-Bacon law has long been a vital cog in the economic progress of this nation.”

Calvert, who opposes the wage provision, said the entire argument is irrelevant because California labor law is more generous than federal law.

“There are people who hold strong opinions on both sides and I’m just trying to get this bill done,” Calvert said.

Calvert has tried to persuade labor interests that the federal provision is meaningless in California because of state law. But Kathy Roeder, spokeswoman for the AFL-CIO, said unions consider it important to have Congress on record in support of the prevailing wage issue.

Calvert also has tried to convince his own party leaders to back off their position.

Democrats have argued that Republicans could call for separate votes on the wage language in the three delayed bills. But Republicans don’t want to put the matter to a vote at all.

Meanwhile, time is running out on Calvert and his hope of getting CalFed through Congress and to the president. Without his bill, or a similar measure in the Senate also awaiting action, CalFed almost certainly will not get an infusion of federal money to pay one-third of its $9 billion cost.

Calvert said he has no choice but to keep trying to break the stalemate.

“That’s why legislating is a tough business,” he said. “I’m hoping we can use logic to move this bill ahead.”

SAN JOSE — There are two things to consider in judging the sanity of Yosemite killer Cary Stayner: the criminal and his crimes.

There’s his deformed head, a legacy of mental disorders, a troubled childhood and the voices that he said told him to “do the job.” There’s also Feb. 15, 1999, the day he plotted, acted and began covering his tracks in the three methodical killings.

The defense asked jurors Thursday to focus on the killer, his twisted mind and his traumatic upbringing. The prosecution told them to look at how he killed the Yosemite National Park tourists and tried to get away with it.

The Santa Clara County Superior Court jury was left to sort out the rest, weighing the testimony of two psychiatrists who reached opposite conclusions about whether Stayner was crazy or whether he knew precisely what he was doing when he killed — and that he knew it was wrong.

“The thing that screams loudest from the beginning to the end of this case is that the crimes are the result of a mental disease or defect,” defense lawyer Marcia Morrissey told jurors. “These were senseless acts, they were bizarre acts.”

Prosecutor George Williamson conceded in his closing argument that Stayner had mental problems, but he said it didn’t mean he was insane — that is, incapable of knowing he was killing or distinguishing right from wrong.

“People who kill like this defendant are not normal,” Williamson said. “He obviously has issues.”

The jury deliberated for less than three hours before adjourning for the weekend. Deliberations will resume Monday with testimony from a defense expert, who found Stayner insane, being read back to the jury.

The same jury convicted Stayner last month of murdering Carole Sund, 42, her daughter, Juli, 15, of Eureka, and their Argentine friend, Silvina Pelosso, 16, while they were staying at Cedar Lodge, where he worked as a handyman outside Yosemite National Park.

If jurors find him sane they will hear more evidence and decide whether Stayner, 41, is executed. If found innocent by reason of insanity, he will spend his life behind bars — a sentence he’s already serving for murdering park nature guide Joie Armstrong.

Williamson, the plainspoken, Kojak-quoting, to-the-point prosecutor, said the issue of Stayner’s state of mind was a “no brainer.”

He took less than 30 minutes to cover two months of evidence, slipping in digs along the way at the defense, which spent all Wednesday in its closing argument and another hour Thursday during its rebuttal.

“I’m not going to stand up here and waste your time,” Williamson said.

The proof of Stayner’s sanity came right from his own mouth, he said.

In his confession to the FBI, Stayner detailed how he chose his victims, how he tricked his way into their room at the rustic lodge where he worked, how he used a rope to kill two of them quietly, how he meticulously cleaned up afterward and how he tried to throw investigators off his trail.

Williamson revisited the facts in the case, repeatedly saying that “he had to have enough sense” to know his prey were in an isolated section of the lodge, to recognize they were vulnerable and to know there was no man who might stop him.

In convicting Stayner last month, the same panel rejected defense claims that his warped mind prevented him from forming the intent required for a first-degree murder conviction.

Williamson, who has drawn on the wisdom of the lollipop-sucking TV detective Kojak to sum up evidence, said the defense had merely dusted off that evidence for the sanity phase.

SACRAMENTO — The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Thursday it has adopted its recovery plan for the threatened California red-legged frog, the amphibian believed to have inspired Mark Twain’s short story, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.”

Plans include protecting and restoring the frog’s habitat; monitoring its population; researching both the frog and threats to the species; and re-establishing populations within its range.

The plan outlines what state and federal agencies should be doing, and what private landowners and organizations can do voluntarily. However, the service said there is no requirement for specific action or spending.

The plan seems to track the draft proposal, “which is not a perfect plan but ... in general sets out a reasonable plan for recovery,” said Brendan Cummings, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity. “The devil is in the details.”

The frog’s range has brought it into conflict with developers, who have fought protections both within the agency and in federal court.

Once prized as a culinary treat, the population of the largest native frog in the western United States has declined significantly since the 1865 publication of Twain’s short story about a frog named “Dan’l Webster” that could “get over more ground in one straddle than any animal of his breed you ever see.”

Although the world frog-jumping contest is held each spring at the Calaveras County Fair, bullfrogs now are used because the red-legged frog no longer is found in the area.

The frog’s historic range has shrunk 70 percent because of habitat loss and the introduction of new predators. The service said it still can be found in 256 streams or drainages, mostly along the north-central coast. But the Center for Biological Diversity says there are now only four places known to have populations greater than 350.

Developers and conservationists have been fighting over protecting that land since the service designated more than 4 million acres as critical habitat in March 2001. The 4 million acres cover parts of 28 of the state’s 58 counties, from Tehama and Plumas counties in the north to the Mexican border.

SANTA ANA — California’s Libertarian Party is considering dropping its candidate for governor because he spit on a radio talk show host.

The party’s 12-member executive committee was scheduled to meet Saturday to vote on whether to rescind support for Gary Copeland, who admitted to The Orange County Register he spit on the radio host.

“We were mortified when we first heard of this. It takes 10 votes of the executive committee, and we have the votes,” said party chairman Aaron Starr. “The party has to take a stand on this.”

Copeland said he spat on KABC radio host Mark Whitman after Whitman switched off Copeland’s microphone during an interview Sunday at the station’s Los Angeles studio, the newspaper reported Thursday.

The host turned off the mike when Copeland was recounting past abuses of immigrants and suggested that Whitman supported such treatment. Copeland got up to leave, heard several on-air comments from Whitman, then turned and spit on him.

“Since I could not say what I believed, I thought I would show what I believed,” Copeland said.

LAGUNA NIGUEL — A fired nuclear power plant employee was sentenced to 90 days in jail Thursday for threatening former co-workers and amassing illegal weapons.

David Reza pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of making a harassing telephone call and a felony count of possessing an assault rifle.

Authorities said Reza called a union representative after he was fired from the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in January and said: “They have taken my job, they have taken my life ... I’ll take my guns and go to San Onofre and whack a bunch of people.”

Deputies served search warrants at Reza’s Laguna Niguel home and a storage unit in nearby San Juan Capistrano, finding 54 weapons at the house and more than 250 in the storage unit. Among them was a hand-held, anti-tank rocket launcher

They also found 4,000 to 5,000 rounds of ammunition and four inert hand grenades lying next to a container of explosive powder.

Reza said the weapons were antiques he had been collecting since childhood.

Orange County Superior Court Judge Carlton Biggs ordered Reza to report to jail on Oct. 11 and placed him on three years of probation. He must stay at least 300 yards away from the power plant and cannot contact the plant’s employees.

The 44-year-old mechanic also was fined over $2,000 and ordered to turn over most of his gun collection to a gun dealer, Deputy District Attorney Patti Sanchez said.

California Highway Patrol officials said a high-speed chase across the Bay Bridge early Thursday ended in San Francisco, with two crashes and the arrest of four suspects in the South of Market area.

The fleeing van, bearing homemade paper license plates, sped up to between 80 and 100 mph at times on the bridge, according to Shawn Chase of the CHP, before crashing just after 1 a.m. on the offramp from Interstate Highway 80 at 5th Street. Although shots were also fired there no one was injured, according to Chase.

One of the East Bay men eventually arrested was believed to be a suspect in an Oakland homicide earlier this week, Chase said.

But Oakland police spokesman George Phillips clarified afterward that seeming similarities between this vehicle's description and one linked to the death of John Roane in a West Oakland residence Tuesday proved to be nothing after all.

The killer in the Roane case remains at large, Phillips said, adding that these individuals may have taken off because of unrelated warrants or some other reason.

Before the suspects were taken into custody – and one more person inside the van got away –- the van allegedly crashed into another car by running a red light at Sixth and Folsom streets. Although a man inside the other vehicle was injured, he refused medical treatment and went home. One suspect who had gotten out of the van was also injured when the vehicle ran over his foot, said the CHP spokesman.

The early-morning chase also led officers onto rooftops and into an auto shop in the neighborhood around Folsom before the incident wrapped up around 1:30 a.m. San Francisco police assisted at the scene.

HAYWARD — Even though the California Energy Commission has licensed the 600-megawatt Russell City Energy Center in Hayward, Calpine Corp. says it won’t build the facility without a power contract.

In announcing the licensing Wednesday, Gov. Gray Davis said the natural gas-fired plant “is necessary to improve energy reliability in the Bay Area.” The commission approved the plant, which is expected to cost $300 million to $400 million, on a 5-0 vote.

But Calpine, which had been expected to begin construction next spring and put it into commercial operation in the summer of 2005, said low wholesale prices for electricity have made the company wary of new projects.

“We’re not moving into new construction of plants without power purchasing contracts,” Calpine spokesman Kent Robertson said. “Current market conditions are an obstacle.”

BOSTON — In its 102 years, Symphony Hall has hosted an auto show, an escape by Harry Houdini, mayoral inaugurations and meetings of the Communist Party.

But never, it is believed, a sporting event. Until now.

On Thursday, the U.S. Open squash tournament is set to begin, drawing 11 of the world’s top 12 players to the venerable music hall to compete for prize money and promote their sport.

Workmen were busy Wednesday constructing the 22,000-pound portable court and surrounding it with 550 seats. Squash — similar to racquetball but played with a smaller and less bouncy ball — is played within a glass-enclosed box.

Things could get loud at the home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra — Symphony Hall’s construction predates the science of echo-muffling concert hall acoustics.

ALBANY, N.Y. — Two small colleges — each named Alfred and each sharing the tiny village of Alfred — are considering a merger, in part to stop the confusion over their shared name.

Under the proposal, the State University College of Technology at Alfred would become a contract college within the private Alfred University located across the street. The State University of New York system would still own the grounds and employ the staff, but the private institution would handle administration.

“It’s very confusing,” said William Rezak, the president of Alfred State. “There’s a lot of market confusion between the two of us.”

The two schools are in Alfred, a village of only 1,000 permanent residents in western New York. The number of people in Alfred swells to 6,500 including students and people who commute into the town to work at the schools.

Rezak said it is not unusual to have parents and prospective students show up at the wrong campus. “We get each other’s mail,” he said.

Last week’s flap over red, white and blue ribbons had critics calling UC Berkeley unpatriotic. This week, however, university administrators and students put the name-calling behind them and hoped Wednesday’s commemoration of the Sept. 11 attacks would be free of politics.

Not a chance.

While a solemn moment of silence and a handful of poignant stories about Sept. 11 made their mark on the university’s central commemorative event at Sproul Plaza, a series of political speeches and the color of commemorative ribbons generated the most reaction.

The ribbon war began last week when UC Berkeley’s conservative student newspaper published an article about university plans to distribute white ribbons, rather than red, white and blue, so as not to offend or exclude anyone.

After national news outlets picked up the story, UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Berdahl attacked the piece in the campus journal, defended campus patriotism, and said his office would pay for red, white and blue ribbons.

At Wednesday’s commemoration, dozens of students attached the red, white and blue ribbons to their shirts and backpacks.

“I’m proud to be an American and I think it’s appropriate to wear red, white and blue,” said Jesse Gabriel, president of the Associated Students of the University of California, the undergraduate student government.

But a group of about 20 students clad in black displayed white ribbons instead and emphasized that they were mourning the loss not only of the Sept. 11 victims, but of the Afghan civilians who lost their lives in the subsequent war against the Taliban and al-Qaida.

“People who suffered on the day of Sept. 11, or as a result of Sept. 11, in the aftermath, weren’t all U.S. citizens,” said ASUC Sen. Mary Boktor.

Several students scoffed at the controversy, arguing that the campus journal had distorted the story and politicized an event that should not have been political.

But Seth Norman, managing editor of the journal, California Patriot, said the story was accurate.

“We stand behind the reporting 100 percent,” he said.

Defenders of the article added that the student newspaper cannot be blamed for the spread of the story to other outlets.

The politics of Sept. 11 and its aftermath were also on display in a series of speeches that 12 students, chosen by the university, gave on Sproul Plaza.

Joshua Braver, a freshman, warned that politics since Sept. 11 have taken a “jingoistic turn,” while graduate student Snehal Shingavi criticized President George W. Bush, who is expected to make a speech before the United Nations today calling for decisive action against Iraq in an ongoing war on terrorism.

“Today will be a day of reflection and thoughtfulness,” Shingavi said. “Tomorrow, unfortunately, will be day of war.”

Bret Manley, president of the College Republicans, took a different tack in his speech, focusing on the impact Sept. 11 had on bringing the nation together.

“For the first time in my life, we were more than citizens, we were a nation,” he said.

Manley criticized students who made overtly political speeches.

“I thought those were absolutely inappropriate,” he said. “I almost look at it as a funeral service. You don’t go to a funeral service and talk about war.”

The day was not focused on politics alone. In the morning, a group of about 40 people from many different faiths gathered in a “circle of remembrance” sponsored by the University Religious Council to share their reflections on Sept. 11.

Shortly thereafter, scholars at the International House released a group of doves as a symbol of peace.

Amidst the solemn recital of names remembering the people killed on Sept. 11, I feel our grieving is incomplete. Can we truly honor the humanity of our loss if we do not also honor the four thousand civilians that we killed, albeit accidentally, during our retaliation in Afghanistan? Those people were not “collateral damage.” They had names. They had families. They, too, had hopes for the future.

The Berkeley Symphony Orchestra may be firmly grounded in Berkeley, but that doesn’t mean conductor Kent Nagano is always easy to find.

“I think he’s in Berlin today,” said BSO director of development Jennifer Easton, reached a few days ago at the symphony offices. “Or he might be on a plane right now.”

Berlin, London, or anywhere in between: take your pick. It’s business as usual for the 50-year-old Nagano, whose international reputation continues to soar even as he maintains his dedication to the Berkeley ensemble he has headed since 1978. The California native, who counts among his mentors Frank Zappa and Olivier Messiaen, has won worldwide acclaim over the past decade as a guest conductor in some of the most famous concert halls of Europe and the U.S. The Chicago Symphony, the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, all vie for his talents. He’s been principal guest conductor for the London Symphony since 1990 and was director of England’s famed Halle Orchestra from 1991 to 2000. Currently he serves as principal conductor for the Los Angeles Opera and music director of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, in addition to his Berkeley post.

His admirers often wonder how long Nagano will continue to stay in the Bay Area. As one observer noted, “It's like a top-notch professional painter choosing to teach at Crossroads School instead of UCLA.” Every time a major American orchestra announces the search for a new conductor, Nagano’s local fans watch nervously to see if their native son will be wooed away.

But Nagano, who lives in San Francisco with his pianist wife, Mari Kodama, and their young daughter, has repeatedly said publicly that the Bay Area is where he wants to be. And Berkeley’s orchestra, while not on the radar screen of most major classical musicians, offers something that many conductors might envy: a forum for experimentation.

“The thing about Berkeley is it allows [Nagano] to do things he can’t do elsewhere,” says Easton. “He can try new things he can’t try elsewhere; this town is more open to creativity.”

Nagano is known for varied programs that offer a sampling of styles old and new. Next Wednesday’s season opener at Zellerbach Hall is typical. It features works by Beethoven, Messiaen, and Gyorgy Ligeti, and a symphony by Galina Ustvolskaya, a Russian composer little known in the west. Each of the works has a spiritual theme or text. While some are familiar, others are little known.

The Pacific Mozart Ensemble, a choral group directed by Richard Dick, once again joins the BSO for this innovative program. First up is Ligeti’s choral work “Lux

Aeterna,” a haunting, shimmering piece based on the Latin Mass for the Dead. Stanley Kubrick borrowed this music for the soundtrack of “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

The choral ensemble is also heard in “Christ on the Mount of Olives,” Beethoven’s only oratorio. This rarely heard work is a dramatic, emotional piece that depicts Christ’s inner struggle at the Garden of Gethsemane. Soloists include soprano Pamela Coburn, tenor Bruce Sledge, and bass Christopher Robinson.

It is not surprising that Nagano would choose a piece by Messiaen, a composer who is a personal friend and for whose work Nagano has been a leading interpreter. “L’Ascension,” written in 1933, is a four-part instrumental work inspired by Christian scripture. It remains one of Messiaen’s most popular pieces.

Of particular interest is a short orchestral piece by octogenarian Russian composer Galina Ustvolskaya which will almost certainly be new to local audiences. Her Symphony No. 4 (“The Prayer”), described as a one-movement “pocket” symphony, is packed with dramatic force despite its brevity. Ustvolskaya, born in 1919, spent most of her life living under the Communist regime. While she was sometimes honored for her music, she frequently ran afoul of the Soviet authorities for exploring themes considered inappropriate to Communist life.

Still living today in her native St. Petersburg, Ustvolskaya shows an independent spirit born of long years of resistance. When Nagano telephoned her to request permission to perform “The Prayer,” her first reaction was to hang up on him. He persisted, and now Berkeley concert goers will be able to enjoy this work for themselves.

Despite an encouraging start to the season, the Cal football team played to a tiny crowd of 24,619 fans at Memorial Stadium on Saturday against New Mexico State, a fact that surprised several Bears players.

“I definitely expected more people to show up,” senior safety Bert Watts said Tuesday. “I guess we can only hope to win more games and get more fans out there.”

The crowd, which barely filled one-third of Memorial Stadium’s seats, was concentrated in the alumni sections and student section on the sidelines, with some of the corner sections barely populated at all. When the Cal chant leaders tried to get the two sides to coordinate on a cheer, it took several tries to get things going.

Remarkably, Saturday’s attendance was lower than any of the Bears’ home games last season, a 1-10 disaster that may still be keeping fans away. Other factors include a lack of parking in the stadium area, with fraternities nearby charging $20 or more for a spot, and lack of enthusiasm over watching the Bears play low-profile New Mexico State.

“I can understand why people didn’t come,” said wide receiver LaShaun Ward. “When you think about it logically, they didn’t know what to expect. They probably thought the opposition wasn’t too tough, but a win’s a win for us.”

The Bears face a sterner test this week against No. 15 Michigan State in East Lansing, Mich. Wideout Geoff McArthur thinks an upset of the Spartans will prove to fans that Cal might be a team worth watching in person.

“I think if we come back off the road with a win, they’ll understand it’s not a fluke,” he said.

Even the orgy of scoring in Cal’s 70-22 opener against Baylor didn’t attract additional fans. In fact, the attendance dropped nearly 3,000 from the first game to the second. Apparently a 48-point win wasn’t impressive enough to draw people away from their television sets.

“I hope everyone was home watching the game on television,” Watts said. “That’s what I’ve been telling myself. I’d hate to think no one saw us win.”

Head coach Jeff Tedford, who came to Cal from football-crazy Oregon University, wasn’t convinced the crowd was actually smaller in his second game with the school.

“When I looked up during the game, it looked like there were more people in the stands,” Tedford said. “I was surprised to hear there were actually less than the first week. It’s not something we worry about during the game, but I was hoping there would be more people there.”

Tedford said the home-field advantage was a big factor in the Ducks’ rise to prominence while he was an assistant in Eugene, and he hopes to build the same kind of fan base in Berkeley with some success on the field.

“If you can create that kind of atmosphere, it can help your team a lot,” he said. “I think we’ve given the fans every reason to be optimistic at this point. We just have to do our jobs and hopefully we can win some support back.”

One encouraging sign was the spirit of the student section for the first two games. Chants of “We love Tedford!” and “Undefeated!” have rung out late in games as students get used to cheering for a winning team.

Watts said he has gotten plenty of support from fellow students on campus.

“I’ve talked to a lot of other students who seem really excited about us,” he said. “I talked to people who watched the Baylor game on television and went out and bought season tickets.”

Senior defensive end Tully Banta-Cain, who gave the crowd something to cheer about with 4 1/2 sacks against the Aggies, admitted puzzlement over the reduction in crowds despite the team’s winning ways.

“Even last year when we were losing we were getting big crowds, and now that we’re winning we’re not. That’s pretty weird,” Banta-Cain said. “Not to dis the fans who are up there, because that shows who the true fans are.”

NOTES: Wide receivers Chase Lyman and Junior Brignac continue to battle injuries. Brignac has an ankle sprain and Lyman a hamstring pull that will keep each out of Saturday’s game. Tedford said it’s too early in the season to consider redshirting either player... Defensive end Tom Canada continues to be away from the team with what Tedford termed “personal issues.” Canada, a senior, missed the New Mexico State game and will not travel to East Lansing... Banta-Cain’s mother, Joya Banta, produces a website that follows her son and the Cal football team through the 2002 season. It can be found on at www.joyadesigns/tully.com.

Budget shortfalls threatening to close two Berkeley swimming pools have already cost 50 seniors their four-year-old water aerobics class.

Seniors at the West Campus Pool, at Addison and Curtis streets, say the city has unfairly singled them out while it battles with the Berkeley Unified School District about pool fees.

“This is discrimination against seniors,” said class member Sydney Vilen.

The water aerobic classes, provided free by the Berkeley Adult School, were abruptly canceled last month after the school was unable to pay the city $14,000.

City officials said that this year’s tight budget gave them no choice but to pull the plug on the program.

Senior criticism of the class cancellation comes amid increasing public anger about the city’s scheduled November through April closure of the West Campus Pool and Willard Pool on Telegraph Avenue. The pool closures are also cost-saving measures.

Under a 1991 agreement, the school district and the city are supposed to reimburse one another for use of each other’s facilities. For several years, however, neither side has bothered to make payments, said Lisa Caronna, director of the city’s Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Department.

But now that the city is strapped with a budget deficit it has asked the school district to pay the money it owes. Under the 1991 agreement, the school district is supposed to fund a portion of electricity, gas and water expenses for school-sponsored water programs estimated to cost about $80,000 a year.

Caronna said the money is vital to the parks department, which has been asked to cut $100,000 from its budget.

The pools cost Berkeley $800,000 a year, Caronna said, but they bring in only about $200,000.

Adult school principal Margaret Kirkpatrick said she did not realize that the school was responsible for pool costs. She added that, due to school board budget constraints, the adult school did not have $14,000 for the program.

Seniors say the city’s decision was punitive.“They wouldn’t even give us a grace period until November [when the pool is scheduled to close for the winter],” Vilen said.

Caronna, though, said the budget crunch is forcing the pools to ask users for more money.

“We are a small city and run five swimming pools so when we don’t get attendance, we look for programs that weren’t heavily attended,” Caronna said.

At the city’s urging, other swim organizations such as the Berkeley Bears youth swim team have increased their yearly dues, from $12,000 to $22,000, to help pay for their own programs.

The seniors, however, haven’t taken such an approach.

One idea called for seniors to pay $22.50 a month to take the class. But the current enrollment would not pay for a teacher who was previously paid with school board grants, a pool official said.

The senior water aerobics class was the only adult swim program the school district offered. All school district youth swim programs will continue while the city and school district discuss exactly how much money is owed for use of the city’s pools.

As everyone is well aware, Sept. 11 was the one-year anniversary of tragic events. The fire service lost over 340 firefighters as a result of that tragedy. An event we as firefighters and a nation hope never to witness again. Shortly after Sept. 11 the Berkeley Firefighters Association set out to do whatever we could to assist our brothers and sisters of the fire department of New York City. As a membership, we went out to the community of Berkeley and began a campaign called, “Fill the Boot for the FDNY.” Firefighters from Berkeley were on street corners to raise donations for the families of the fallen firefighters of the FDNY. As a result of our efforts from the Fill the Boot campaign, the Berkeley Firefighters Association was able to raise $80,000. This money was donated to the Widows and Orphans Fund of the FDNY last December.

I would like to take this opportunity on behalf of over 100 members of the Berkeley Firefighters Association Local 1227 to thank the citizens of Berkeley and the surrounding communities, plus local merchants for their donations and hard work for our cause. The overwhelming support that we received from the community made our Fill the Boot campaign a huge success.

The Berkeley High girls’ volleyball team lost its first match of the season on Tuesday, falling to Castro Valley 15-8, 15-7, 15-12. Vanessa Williams led the Jackets with five kills and 10 digs, while fellow senior Amalia Jarvis had 12 digs.

Field hockey players honored

Cal’s Michelle Wald, a senior midfielder, was named Co-Offensive NorPac Player of the Week and Kelly Knapp, a sophomore goalkeeper, was awarded Defensive Player of the Week in the first week of NorPac standings.

During Cal’s roadtrip to the Midwest, Wald scored a pair of game-winning goals. Both goals came in 1-0 victories over cross-divisional rival Southwest Missouri and Big Ten foe Indiana.

Knapp recorded four shutouts and made 35 saves in Cal’s first five games. She stopped a season-high 10 shots in a 1-0 win over cross-conference rival SMS. Against the Big Ten, she posted two eight save games, a 1-0 win over Indiana and a tough 1-0 OT loss to Ohio State.

Alta Bates benefit this weekend

Berkeley Tennis Club will host the 11th Annual Alta Bates Summit Celebrity Classic on Saturday. The Classic is a benefit for the Comprehensive Breast Center, a full-service, state-of-the-art breast cancer clinic at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Berkeley.

Events on Saturday include an exhibition match with Tracy Austin and Zina Garrison at 11:30 a.m., celebrity doubles matches throughout the day and a gala dinner at 7:30 p.m. at the Claremont Resort.

The Classic is the largest event of its kind in the country and has collectively raised more than $2 million for a wide range of life-saving and -enhancing services. Tickets to watch the Tennis Classic are $25 each (children 10 and under are free); admission cost includes box lunch. For ticket information call (888) 337-8800. For more information visit www.absfdn.org.

Jay Kelekian, who in 1994 helped lead the city’s fight against the end of statewide rent control, was named executive director of the city’s rent board last week.

Most recently a management analyst for the city’s Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Department, Kelekian accepted a three-year contract to head the board which mediates conflict between landlords and tenants. He starts the job in October.

Kelekian, a rent control advocate, was selected by a majority of pro-tenant rent board commissioners, despite landlord disappointment with Kelekian.

“The impression we got was that he wasn’t very interested in our concerns,” said Robert Englund of the Berkeley Property Owners Association, which participated in the interview process.

The rent board is overseen by nine publically elected commissioners and was constituted in 1980 to decide how much landlords can raise rent each year, to enforce rent control laws and to settle housing disputes.

During the board’s first 15 years, tenant and landlord advocates battled for control of the board.

However, after passage of the state Costa-Hawkins Act gave more power to landlords, public sentiment turned against them and pro-tenant advocates dominated the board.

“The image most small property owners have of the rent board is that they are there to punish us,” said Englund.

The commissioners sit as an appeals jury on disputes between landlords and tenants. Landlords say that some rent board decisions are so unabashedly pro-tenant that landlords have appealed rent board decisions to Alameda County Superior Court.

Tenant rights advocates, however, counter that landlords have abused their Costa-Hawkins privileges. They add that the landlords’ victory in the state legislature requires the rent board to take an activist position to protect the rights of Berkeley tenants.

Kelekian said he does not want to become bogged down in housing politics.

“My goal will be to provide all of the board members with accountable and fair information and see that the laws are administered in an unbiased way,” he said.

The executive director position is primarily managerial, but Kelekian will still have authority to impact policy. He will be responsible for the hiring of hearing examiners who serve as trial judges in disputes between tenants and landlords, as well as for working with rent board commissioners to set policy goals.

Kelekian said that to deal with the increase of evictions since the end of rent control, the rent board should place greater emphasis on tenant outreach and eviction monitoring.

Rent Board commissioners were divided on a new director. After interviewing five candidates, they decided to negotiate a contract with Kelekian by a vote of 5-4.

The narrow margin highlights the split on the board between those who want to forcefully push tenant’s interests and those who fear that taking too strident a pro-tenant approach could embroil the rent board in unnecessary litigation with landlords.

Kelekian’s base of support came from the activist wing of the rent board, although the entire board supported his candidacy after it was evident that he had enough support to be offered the position.

Kelekian is no stranger to the rent board. From 1984 to 1994, he worked for the board in several capacities, and has worked as a management analyst for various city departments during the last 18 years.

He says his familiarity with city government should help him at the rent board.

“I hope my experience will allow me to facilitate even closer ties with other departments to create stable affordable and habitable homes,” he said.

(Note: The letter’s author proposed a development for 1155 Hearst St.)

The state's rejection of the city of Berkeley's Housing Element, citing “too many development restrictions,” highlights the long litany of mistakes, delays, political chicanery and downright illegal actions designed to hinder the legal development of property in Berkeley. Such is unfortunate experience.

Our original development application met all existing zoning standards until the city, in an attempt to stop our development, downzoned our property making it financially impossible for us to build any more new units. This decision is currently the subject of legal action.

The Zoning Adjustments Board asserted that it does not need our affordable housing project (as defined by the state) to meet its state mandated goals, yet there are 4,000 families on the Section 8 waiting list, up to 3,000 homeless people in Berkeley, and the city manager is on record as stating that the city “has never met its regional fair share housing allocations.”

The ZAB denied our application, assuming incorrectly that California Housing Law is not intended to apply to Berkeley. In fact the law states that charter cities are specifically included. There is no exception in state law for Berkeley or any other city. The City Council will have an opportunity to correct this misinterpretation and avert any lawsuit.

Finally, we are not “trying to skirt the zoning rules.” In fact we have complied with everything the planners have requested. We are just a mother and daughter using our life's savings, attempting to comply with city and state law while enhancing a small rental property we have subsidized for 30 years.

If the city follows the law there will be no necessity for future action to protect our legal rights and recover some of the money lost on this endeavor. Perhaps if the laws were routinely followed without delay, housing could be built in a more timely fashion to address the waiting lists of people desperate for housing.

LONDON — As much of the world paused Wednesday to mourn the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, a group of Islamic militants praised the “positive outcomes” of the violence they claim to reject, and offered support to the aims of Osama bin Laden.

The fundamentalists, in what appeared to be the most radical Muslim gathering on the anniversary of the terrorist atrocities, said al-Qaida had a “rational justification” for the attacks, but denied having ties to bin Laden’s terror network.

“The attack in New York was a counterattack for the attacks in Iraq and Palestine,” said Muhammad al-Massari, a Saudi dissident who attended the meeting at Finsbury Park Mosque in north London.

“One Muslim decided to take action... He took one eye for a hundred. He still has 99 eyes to go,” al-Massari added and praised bin Laden as a hero “fighting for his beliefs.”

A dozen or so men with kaffiyehs over their faces stood on the steps of the north London mosque, barring about 50 journalists from entering the building, which is widely regarded as a center of radical Islam in Britain.

Sheik Omar Bakri Mohammed said the meeting at Finsbury Park Mosque, titled “Sept. 11, 2001: A Towering Day in History,” argues that the attacks were justified because Muslims must defend themselves against armed aggression.

“I don’t believe in using violence,” Mohammed told journalists before the meeting. “Definitely al-Qaida has got rational justification for what they did on Sept. 11. Maybe I disagree with them, but they have the right to fight back especially after they (the United States) bombed Sudan, then they bombed Afghanistan.”

Mohammed heads Al-Muhajiroun, a militant group that recruits on university campuses and encourages members to join armed struggles abroad. It says its goal is to make Britain an Islamic state.

A statement issued at the end of the meeting condemned “any and all aggression against the government of the Taliban” — the ousted Afghan regime.

It accused the United States of acting as if it is “above any law” and said “the only Islamic response to such unparalleled arrogance and oppression is to do one’s utmost to resist the oppression no matter how weak one may find oneself.”

Al-Masri, who lost his hands and left eye fighting the former Soviet-backed government in Afghanistan, said this Sept. 11 was “a day of thinking and rethinking and getting the message out. I know many Muslims are oppressed. This is not a day to celebrate,” said al-Masri, who is a prayer leader at the mosque and denies supporting terrorism.

His funds were frozen by the U.S. Treasury for his alleged membership in the Islamic Army of Aden. That organization is linked to al-Qaida and claimed responsibility for the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000, in which 17 American sailors were killed.

He has had British citizenship since 1985, and is protected by British law from extradition to Yemen.

As a Berkeley pedestrian and advocate for persons with disabilities, I am moved to thank the Berkeley Police Department for their work protecting pedestrians in the crosswalk. Red flags didn't work. There have to be real consequences for unsafe drivers before more pedestrians are killed. Thank you, Berkeley police.

This week, four women from Costa Rica’s budding disability rights movement are visiting a city that plays host to some of the world’s foremost political experts: Berkeley.

The women, representatives of Foro por los Derechos Humanos de las Personas con Discapacidad (Human Rights Forum for the Disabled), based in Costa Rica’s capital of San Jose, hope to pick up valuable lessons about organizing the disabled so they can wage an effective political campaign on the homefront.

The activists are currently fighting to win implementation of Costa Rica’s Law 7600, passed in 1996. The groundbreaking legislation guarantees access to public transportation, education, the workplace, recreation, health care and more for the disabled. But according to “El Foro,” as the organization is known, Costa Rica has a long way to go to make the law a reality.

The activists’ fight currently centers on public transportation. Law 7600 gave the government seven years to create accessible bus service, but with the deadline only eight months away, none of Costa Rica’s 5,000 buses are accessible, advocates say.

The El Foro representatives, hosted by Berkeley’s Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, or DREDF, have visited a number of local advocacy and service organizations and sat in on a disability law course at UC Berkeley Tuesday night. They said they have picked up a number of lessons that will help in their struggle.

“I think the most important thing we’ve learned here is strategies – how to build an agenda, a communication strategy, political ways to fight,” said Catalina Derandas, an attorney with El Foro.

But Andrea Vargas Carmiol, a student active in El Foro said the burgeoning movement has learned a more basic lesson in Berkeley, where college students helped kickstart the national push for disabled rights in the 1970s. That lesson is that building a largescale movement and creating real change is possible.

“In the United States, the movement of people with disabilities started many, many years ago and we are just beginning,” Carmiol said.

The relationship between El Foro and DREDF dates back to October 2000, when DREDF convened an international conference of disability advocates in Washington D.C. on the 10th anniversary of the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act, or ADA, which helped inspire similar legislation in 40 other countries.

Derandas said Dr. Federico Montero, who would soon co-found El Foro, was in attendance and began to build a relationship between the Berkeley group and the Costa Rican movement.

DREDF then won a $48,000 grant from the U.S. State Department Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs to conduct a Dec. 2001 workshop in Costa Rica.

A second State Department grant, totaling $58,000, is paying for the current visit to Berkeley and a follow-up forum, run by DREDF, in Costa Rica this December.

It saddens and angers me that the air quality issue is impacting the expansion of the Harrison House Homeless Shelter. The shelter is located on the outskirts of Berkeley in an industrial neighborhood because most of the citizens of Berkeley don't want “those kind of people” in their neighborhood. Now these same Berkeley people are telling us they are so concerned about the impact of the air quality on the well-being of the people they sent to this neighborhood that their facilities shouldn't be expanded. Boona cheema, the person who has devoted much of her life to working with homeless people said it best. “What do you think the answer is going to be when you ask a homeless mother with two kids if she would rather live on the streets or in safe, warm housing in West Berkeley?”

The Berkeley City Council and the community should support the provision of as much additional housing for the homeless at Harrison House as is practical and desired by the people who are devoting their lives to improving the overall welfare of those people who need this type of support.

SAN FRANCISCO — Divers have pumped most of the oil from a sunken ship near the Golden Gate, but they may not be able to get all of it out.

Oil in the SS Jacob Luckenbach, which sank in 1953 after colliding with another ship, has been seeping from the freighter periodically for at least 10 years. The leaks killed thousands of seabirds, fouled beaches from Point Reyes to Monterey and stumped the U.S. Coast Guard and environmentalists before they pinpointed the Luckenbach as the culprit earlier this year.

Since June, divers have pumped more than 55,000 gallons of oil from the freighter, which is 175 feet below the surface.

But tanks on the starboard side of the ship are buried 20 feet deep in the ocean floor. Three cargo decks with trains, trucks and parts are stacked above them, but they’re starting to cave in, making the area unsafe for divers, said Kim McCleneghan, a senior environmental scientist with the California Office of Spill Prevention and Response.

For those tanks, McCleneghan said the best idea may be to let sand flow in and seal any cracks, preventing the oil, which is extremely thick, from escaping. State and federal agencies and the company doing the salvage still need to discuss their options.

Airports report less activity

Officials say there are fewer planes flew in and out the Bay Area's three major airports Wednesday, a downturn in air traffic that airlines prepared for given the one-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks involving hijacked planes.

A spokesman for Oakland International Airport said there was 30 percent less flight activity at the Oakland Airport than on a typical Wednesday.

“It's because of the day, and what happened,” the spokesman said.

He said that last night, Mexicana airlines canceled two flights that were scheduled to arrive in Oakland today in response to Tuesday's announcement that the United States has been put on a high state of alert against a possible terrorist attack.

HMOs disclose plans to drop

coverage in parts of NorCal

SAN FRANCISCO — Tens of thousands of Medicare patients in parts of Northern California will lose coverage by two major HMOs at year’s end.

PacifiCare of California said it will leave Contra Costa and Alameda counties on Jan. 1, a move that will affect more than 10,000 seniors. The group also said Monday it will drop another 12,000 members in Butte and San Joaquin counties.

In addition, Health Net said it will pull out of the Livermore area, which means 460 Alameda County patients must find new coverage.

Monday was the deadline for HMOs to notify the government whether they would continue to serve the elderly and disabled who rely on Medicare for health coverage.

SANTA CRUZ — City leaders plan to join medical marijuana users at a pot giveaway at City Hall next week. Their goal is to send a message to federal authorities that medical marijuana is welcome.

The invitation comes one week after agents from the Drug Enforcement Agency arrested the high-profile owners of a pot farm and confiscated 130 plants that had been grown to be used as medicine.

“It’s just absolutely loathsome to me that federal money, energy and staff time would be used to harass people like this,” said Vice Mayor Emily Reilly, who with several colleagues on the City Council plans to help pass out medical marijuana to sick people from the garden-like courtyard at City Hall next Tuesday.

City Attorney John Barisone said that although the City Council did pass a resolution denouncing the raid, there is no official city sponsorship of the event. He said council members and medical marijuana advocates are acting on their own accord in a public space.

Judge: inmates can receive mail

downloaded from Internet

SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge has overturned a California Department of Corrections policy barring inmates from receiving mail containing printed material from the Internet.

U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken, in an opinion made public Wednesday, wrote that inmates have a right to receive mail and that the government did not adequately justify the ban, first imposed in 1998.

The case stemmed from a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union, which argued that inmates were entitled to communications mailed to them regardless of whether they originated from the Internet.

The corrections department adopted the policy on grounds that Internet-generated mail may contain hidden coded messages, which could pose a danger in the prison.

Wilken said the department “failed to articulate any reason to believe that Internet-produced materials are more likely to contain coded, criminal correspondence than photocopied or handwritten materials.”

Yosemite killer’s lawyer says evidence

tips scale toward insanity

SAN JOSE — With no dispute remaining over the guilt of motel handyman Cary Stayner and little question he suffered from mental problems, his lawyer tried to spare his life Wednesday by proving he was crazy when he murdered three Yosemite tourists in 1999.

Defense lawyer Marcia Morrissey reviewed testimony in the sanity phase of Stayner’s death penalty trial that she said proved he was insane.

From symptoms of schizophrenia to obsessive compulsive disorder to psychosis, Stayner suffered an illness that was greater than a sum of its parts, she said.

His problems were so severe that psychiatrists could not agree just what afflicted him.

“It’s just a function of the fact that Mr. Stayner has so many other problems,” Morrissey said. “It’s hard to say exactly what.”

FORT COLLINS — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention laboratory has confirmed that a Los Angeles County woman contracted West Nile virus.

The Rocky Mountain News reported in Wednesday’s editions that researchers confirmed the case by testing a blood sample.

The case is believed to be the first appearance of West Nile virus west of the Continental Divide. It’s a baffling finding because West Nile has not been seen in Utah, Arizona, Nevada or anywhere else in California.

This week officials said a Houston-area man visiting relatives in Los Angeles fell ill in a probable case of West Nile virus. However, they believe the man was likely bitten by an infected mosquito in Texas.

“How she got it, your guess is as good as mine,” lab director Duane Gubler said Tuesday. “This virus continues to surprise us.”

Migrating birds could have carried the germ north from Central America or Mexico, Gubler said. However, under that scenario, Gubler said the virus would probably have been detected in sentinel chickens or horses.

“California has one of the best, if not the best, surveillance system in the country,” Gubler said.

The California woman lived near Los Angeles International Airport and worked for an air-courier company, Gubler said.

“It’s possible, since it was in the area of the L.A. airport, that the virus came in a mosquito that hitched a ride on a plane.” he said. “It’s pure speculation.”

No human West Nile cases have been reported in Colorado.

Nineteen more Colorado horses tested positive for West Nile on Tuesday, bringing the statewide equine total to 117. At least 31 of those horses have died, according to the state Agriculture Department.

Nationwide, 45 human West Nile deaths and 1,086 human cases have been confirmed this year by the CDC.

SACRAMENTO — California’s Department of Education would be placed under the control of the governor as part of a new legislative proposal released Tuesday to restructure the state’s education system.

The plan is a proposed expansion of the state’s master plan for education, which guarantees every student the chance to go to college.

Any elements of the new plan must be approved by the Legislature and signed by the governor to take effect.

But Sen. Dede Alpert, D-Coronado, chairwoman of the master planning committee, called the plan “a comprehensive way to improve our system of public education.”

The committee wants to make the Department of Education part of the governor’s cabinet, meaning the superintendent of public instruction would no longer be responsible for the state’s educational programs.

Instead, the governor would be held more accountable for California’s education system, said Charles Ratliff, the committee’s senior consultant.

“The governor has the major authority with the budget,” Ratliff said. “He’s able to veto and blue line spending items and set up budget priorities, yet he escapes any responsibility for what happens in schools.”

But the governor has other priorities besides education, said department spokeswoman Nicole Winger, while “the superintendent acts on behalf of the public schools.”

Although state officials said they hope the new master plan will work as well as the original, some educators have expressed skepticism.

One strongly contested part of the plan is its recommendation to eliminate college acceptance policies that give an advantage to students who have taken advanced placement, called AP courses, in high school.

NEW YORK — Yahoo.com’s home page was devoid of its usually vivid colors Wednesday, its white background replaced with gray. Amazon.com carried drawings, essays and poetry from New York City schoolchildren.

“I’ve learned that you should always leave loved ones with loving words,” eighth-grader Stephanie wrote. “It may be the last time you see them.”

The Internet, already home to some poignant electronic archives, marked the Sept. 11 anniversary in its own way. Some Web gathering spots emphasized the medium’s power for instant reaction to galvanizing events. Others stressed not expression, but reflection.

Topica, which sends more than 50 million messages a day to about 4,000 corporate and community discussion lists, took down its site and suspended service for most of the day.

Anna Zornosa, the company’s president, said Topica worried that commercial advertising, could be seen as inappropriate or insensitive on a day of reflection.

Banner ads at AOL Time Warner sites were replaced with pictures of candles and links to a site where visitors could learn of opportunities to give money, volunteer and remember.

Three vending machines at the Berkeley Adult School were broken into early morning on Tuesday. Coins were taken from all three machines.

n Home Burglary

A burglar kicked open a door and proceeded to steal a television and VCR from a home on the 1300 block of Hopkins street around 3:40 p.m. Tuesday. The burglar was seen escaping in a late 1980’s Oldsmobile.

n Scooter stolen

A sky blue 1980 Honda motor scooter, license 5U4962, was stolen from the 2000 block of Allston Way at 6:03 p.m. Tuesday. The robber was described as a black male in his early 20s wearing a white shirt with a blue Adidas logo.

The cruel attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 may bear witness to this. The event has in many instances spurred positive civic action.

Pastors, imams, rabbis and priests reacted to the hate and ignorance that emerged from 9-11 by focusing on teaching tolerance. The police department initiated hate crime education. Action taken in the face of the anthrax scare, which right or wrong has been linked to the events of Sept. 11, could strengthen local public health infrastructure. And the city’s disaster planning efforts have been stepped up.

At the same time, the U.S. Congress reacted to Sept. 11 by passing the PATRIOT Act, which the American Civil Liberties Union, among others, says tramples on constitutional freedoms. Local organizations such as Copwatch and the Middle East Children’s Alliance have held workshops to educate the public about the act.

On Tuesday night the Berkeley City Council passed a resolution opposing parts of the PATRIOT Act and encouraging the protection of civil rights and liberties.

Casting blame on innocents

Anecdotal reports of harassment of Muslims and Middle Easterners began soon after the attacks. At a UC Berkeley vigil on the evening of Sept. 11, one speaker reported that two women wearing headscarves were verbally assaulted on Sproul Plaza and that other students had received “racist and threatening phone calls.”

An Egyptian man was found murdered at the store he owned in San Gabriel. In San Francisco someone left a bag filled with pig's blood on the doorstep of a community center that serves Arabs. Maha Elgenaidi, executive director of the Islamic Network Group in San Jose, reported that callers told her to “get the hell out of this country.” And that, “You people have done nothing but ruin this country, and you will all die. You don't belong here. Your religion is vile and evil.”

A cartoon in the UC Berkeley newspaper, denounced as racist by the student government and a number of student groups, added fuel to the flames. The cartoon showed what some said were Muslims celebrating Sept. 11, because they would go to heaven for their attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The cartoonist, Darrin Bell, argued that the cartoon was intended to portray the specific hijackers and not Muslims in general.

Wajahat Ali, a member of the UC Berkeley Muslim Student Association, was quoted in the UC paper saying: “Some sisters did not want to go to college [as a result of the cartoon].”

Anti-war demonstrators included calls to end “the racist backlash against Arab-Americans,” according to Stop the War Coalition leader Hoang Phan.

Heightened tensions in Palestine and Israel added to an already charged atmosphere, with a brick thrown through a glass door of the Berkeley Hillel and bomb-threat hoaxes made to a number of Berkeley synagogues.

In April, letters with phony anthrax were sent to members of the Hispanic community.

The rise in reported hate crimes in Berkeley has been dramatic. In 1996 there were three; there were five in 1997 and 1998, six in 1999, 10 in 2000, and 23 in 2001. Of the 23 incidents of hate crimes in 2001, 16 occurred after Sept. 11, according to a city staff report. As of mid-June of this year, there had been 28 reported hate crimes.

Attacking hate crime

And so, the city put a plan into action that include training police officers to recognize hate crimes.

The city attorney’s office updated a training manual about hate-crime law, and the mental health division is working to sensitize police to the victims they may encounter. It is important for officers to understand why some people may hesitate to report hate crimes, said Matthew Mock, director of the Family, Children and Multicultural Services for Berkeley Mental Health. It has to do with power inequalities. Victims of hate crimes may have the experience of being treated as lesser individuals by those who have power, such as the police, he said.

Moreover, some people may fear the police as a result of experiences in their home countries, Mock said, underscoring the importance of good police-community relations.

Councilmember Kriss Worthington said he’d like the city to take the next step and create a hate crimes unit within the police department, like Los Angeles and San Francisco have done. A separate unit “gives you a very specialized expertise,” Worthington said, noting that investigation of a hate crime requires officers to determine the perpetrator’s motivation. “It takes very sophisticated experience,” he said.

Using police officers already on duty, however, means no additional costs are generated, said Deputy City Manager Phil Kamlarz.

What is Islam?

After Sept. 11, many people began asking questions about Islam. While hate crimes are relatively rare, it became apparent to many members of the community that Islam was not well understood. Various community organizations and religious institutions stepped in to provide forums for better understanding.

Khalil Bendib, a Berkeley resident of Algerian origins, a sculptor and cartoonist who co-hosts a weekly program on the Middle East on KPFA-radio spoke at the Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center in the spring.

“How did I feel about the talk?” he asked. “I always welcome such interest in my culture and background. … That night at the JCC, I felt as though I had accomplished something, touched a few souls.”

BRJCC Executive Director Joel Bashevkin said programs such as the one in which Bendib participated are “tailored toward tolerance, toward building trust.” Such programs “draw from Jewish values of tolerance and co-existence,” he said.

Another of many cultural exchanges took place at a Sunday morning service at the Berkeley Methodist United Church, where Imam Yassir Chadly was invited to speak. The largely Japanese-American congregation had particular concerns about the “war hysteria,” said Naomi Samouthard. During World War II, Japanese Americans on the West Coast were forcibly interned in camps. Samouthard said the parishioners were concerned with people “vulnerable to hate crimes.”

“Like most Americans, most members of the congregation did not know about Islam,” Samouthard said.

Libraries under attack

One city department spurred to action after the events of Sept. 11 was the Berkeley Public Library, which sponsored a series of lectures: one on Islam, another on the history of Afghanistan and a third on peaceful conflict resolution. Through its foundation, the library also purchased a collection of books on these topics.

But that’s not all the library has done. It has had to face the USA PATRIOT Act. In an effort to get information about terrorists before they strike, the act allows agents of the federal government to get details from public libraries about what patrons are reading.

Because of her life’s lessons, library Director Jackie Griffin values the privacy of her patrons.

She’s directed her staff not to respond to questions or subpoenas from the federal government, but to turn such queries over to her so she can address them with the city attorney. Meanwhile, Griffin has ensured that patrons’ records are limited. The computer server is erased daily, so that a patron’s Internet searches cannot be followed. Records of materials that library users check out are kept until the material is returned or fines are paid. After a book is returned, the name of the patron is kept with the book for 30 days or until another patron checks out book. This is so that one could look up Qu’ran, for example, to see who has checked it out.

The library’s measures “may sound a little paranoid,” Griffin said. However, the FBI has contacted 85 libraries since the Patriot Act was approved. “I want us to be prepared.”

Health Department

addresses bioterrorism

The fear of a bioterrorist attack took hold across the nation in the fall of 2001, when 22 people were sickened and five died from anthrax poisoning. These incidents were never directly linked to the attacks of Sept. 11 yet they disrupted the nation. The postal service and health departments dealt with 40,000 samples of white powder that contained fewer than 10 grams of anthrax, said Dr. Poki Namkung, Berkeley’s health officer and president of the California Conference of Local Health Officers.

In response, the federal government allocated $1 billion to shore up the public health infrastructure.

“This is the first significant money we’ve received to rebuild public health,” Namkung said. California’s share has been $100 million with $10 million going to hospitals, $30 million to Los Angeles County and $50 million divided among local public health departments. Berkeley’s share, determined on a per capita formula, was $240,000. The money will pay for programs aimed at improving communication with local clinics, bettering the clinics’ efficiency and educating the public.

Namkung pointed to the May, 2001 meningitis scare in which one child died in Berkeley. The local health department’s job was to talk with local medical facilities and the public so that any other cases might be immediately recognized and treated, yet to avoid throwing the population into panic. “People must be informed, but not frightened,” Namkung said.

The new funding will permit the Berkeley Health Department to address bioterrorism in a similar manner, but on a much larger scale, Namkung explained, underscoring that an improved local health department would better attack more common health problems such as the flu, which kills 20,000 in the nation each year.

A more secure city

Preparedness training in case of future attacks has taken place in a number of departments. The Fire Department has trained in “weapons of mass destruction,” which includes training its first responders, handlers of hazardous materials and ambulance personnel, according to a staff report.

The city has held joint emergency preparedness exercises with UC Berkeley, Bayer Corporation, Alta Bates Summit Medical Center and Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories. One of the critical questions to come out of a June 6 joint exercise – still unanswered – is “Who calls the shots?” said Deputy City Manager Phil Kamlarz. Communication is key, among various jurisdictions and among city departments. “People still have to talk to each other,” Kamlarz said. “We have to connect all the dots.”

In the works is an update of the city’s emergency radio channel, 1610 AM. Kamlarz called it “primitive and laborious.” Staff should be able to update it quickly and easily, he said.

Mayor Shirley Dean says she is comforted by added security at City Hall. People must now sign in with a secretary before they mount to the council offices and must check in with a secretary once they’ve reached the fifth floor. After Sept. 11 the mayor said she received “a couple of explicit death threats,” and a bulky letter addressed to the mayor of Kabul. More recently, she got a death threat from a former UC Berkeley student, saying “I have a gun with three bullets with your name on it.” The student is now in a Seattle jail waiting extradition to California. The case has nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attacks, the mayor said, but does highlight the overarching need for enhanced security at City Hall.

And so, despite the ominous threat of a terrorist attack, Berkeley has emerged from Sept. 11 as a safer city – more prepared to face earthquakes, wildfires or epidemics as well as terrorists – and more determined to protect civil liberties and understand one another.

The anniversary of Sept. 11 is upon us. The day we remember was dramatically significant in the life and soul of our America. Ground Zero is now sacred ground consecrated by our tears, our grief, our tremendous pain and suffering. It is the place where we became we and us and stopped being the almighty American ego. We, finally, as a culture, grew up.

First we walked a mile in the shoes of the heroic firemen helping and encouraging everyone to exit the twin towers as quickly as possible. They might have known that there was a very strong likelihood they would not return. Then we watched as people jumped from windows and saw others who made it miraculously, safely, thankfully and God-willing, to the ground before the towers collapsed. Our collective imaginations walked the last 60 seconds of their lives. It was a powerful moment of no turning back, no interpretation, just rare raw truth and grief. There were more than 2,000 people who didn't get out at all.

Meanwhile, we began to walk a mile with the plane that crashed into the Pentagon. Then there was the mysterious plane that crashed in Pennsylvania.

That plane had been hijacked by suicide pilots that were heading for Washington, the White House or the Senate. Heroically the passengers learned by cell phone, that the attack on the twin towers was also the work of hijackers like the ones they were, at that moment, dealing with. Knowing then that their destiny would be death, they decided to go for a heroic martyrdom that would save the capital. This knowledge and this choice that they made more than likely saved the capital and in doing so saved the United States of America.

Back in New York, so many people's lives became a story to be told by another, by a surviving friend, co-worker, relative, in the small community newspapers and national dailies where journalists did their walking the last mile in the shoes of those lives lost. Ground Zero brought forth again the heroic, the grief ridden, those with determined or faint hope, searching for survivors. Then there were those who out of great generosity, adventure and genuine compassion, were willing to volunteer and came from all over the country, as far away as California and Florida. Willing to do whatever it took ... moving dirt and debris, serving food, extending support and prayers to the tired and grieving.

We walked a mile with incredible rescue dogs who came from California. In Wisconsin a whole town raised money to build and replace a fire engine that had become worn out, unusable. People all over the country and the world were walking a mile in their shoes by giving donations. All of this walking had to do with what we call in the Peace Empowerment Process, the water element of peace.... identification, empathy, genuine compassion and praise. These powers were generously, tirelessly and selflessly used to express our gratitude, and genuine compassion for the families of those we lost. The power of their collective courage resulted in a genuine martyrdom of the innocents.

September 11, 2001, resulting in Ground Zero, was all about interdependence. Power in the weeks and months that followed had nothing to do with capitalism and everything to do with a community transcending opposites and differences, to express their creativity and genuine compassion. Their collective organic powers were peace, natural developed powers.

September 11, 2002, has everything to do with the sacred responsibility of remembering, with genuine compassion and praise, for New York, Pennsylvania and Washington. We are compelled once again to answer the question "Why do they hate us, the US?" Their truthful answer will take genuine humility on our part and the courage to ask and to receive. The answer will be found if we listen with our minds open. This answer is vital to our survival as a nation and can only be found by asking, listening and by walking a mile in their shoes.

Carolyna Marks is a Berkeley-based artist and sculptor and teaches her Peace Empowerment Process (PEP) to schools and community centers all over the world through her organization World Wall for Peace.

Despite an encouraging start to the season, the Cal football team played to a tiny crowd of 24,619 fans at Memorial Stadium on Saturday against New Mexico State, a fact that surprised several Bears players.

“I definitely expected more people to show up,” senior safety Bert Watts said Tuesday. “I guess we can only hope to win more games and get more fans out there.”

The crowd, which barely filled one-third of Memorial Stadium’s seats, was concentrated in the alumni sections and student section on the sidelines, with some of the corner sections barely populated at all. When the Cal chant leaders tried to get the two sides to coordinate on a cheer, it took several tries to get things going.

Remarkably, Saturday’s attendance was lower than any of the Bears’ home games last season, a 1-10 disaster that may still be keeping fans away. Other factors include a lack of parking in the stadium area, with fraternities nearby charging $20 or more for a spot, and lack of enthusiasm over watching the Bears play low-profile New Mexico State.

“I can understand why people didn’t come,” said wide receiver LaShaun Ward. “When you think about it logically, they didn’t know what to expect. They probably thought the opposition wasn’t too tough, but a win’s a win for us.”

The Bears face a sterner test this week against No. 15 Michigan State in East Lansing, Mich. Wideout Geoff McArthur thinks an upset of the Spartans will prove to fans that Cal might be a team worth watching in person.

“I think if we come back off the road with a win, they’ll understand it’s not a fluke,” he said.

Even the orgy of scoring in Cal’s 70-22 opener against Baylor didn’t attract additional fans. In fact, the attendance dropped nearly 3,000 from the first game to the second. Apparently a 48-point win wasn’t impressive enough to draw people away from their television sets.

“I hope everyone was home watching the game on television,” Watts said. “That’s what I’ve been telling myself. I’d hate to think no one saw us win.”

Head coach Jeff Tedford, who came to Cal from football-crazy University of Oregon, wasn’t convinced the crowd was actually smaller in his second game with the school.

“When I looked upduring the game, it looked like there were more people in the stands,” Tedford said. “I was surprised to hear there were actually less than the first week. It’s not something we worry about during the game, but I was hoping there would be more people there.”

Tedford said the home-field advantage was a big factor in the Ducks’ rise to prominence while he was an assistant in Eugene, and he hopes to build the same kind of fan base in Berkeley with some success on the field.

“If you can create that kind of atmosphere, it can help your team a lot,” he said. “I think we’ve given the fans every reason to be optimistic at this point. We just have to do our jobs and hopefully we can win some support back.”

One encouraging sign was the spirit of the student section. Chants of “We love Tedford!” and “Undefeated!” have rung out late in games as students get used to cheering for a winning team.

Watts said he has gotten plenty of support from fellow students on campus.

“I’ve talked to a lot of other students who seem really excited about us,” he said. “I talked to people who watched the Baylor game on television and went out and bought season tickets.”

Senior defensive end Tully Banta-Cain, who gave the crowd something to cheer about with 4 1/2 sacks against the Aggies, admitted puzzlement over the reduction in crowds despite the team’s winning ways.

“Even last year when we were losing we were getting big crowds, and now that we’re winning we’re not. That’s pretty wierd,” Banta-Cain said. “Not to diss the fans who are up there, because that shows who the true fans are.”

City Council voted Tuesday to clamp down on brothels that masquerade as massage parlors.

The unanimous vote places strict restrictions on massage parlors, which are commonly fronts for prostitution, and gives the city greater latitude to shut down the its 18 established parlors if they offer sexual favors to clients.

After police shut down two parlors on prostitution charges last year, the police department and the city attorney determined that Berkeley needed to tighten its massage parlor ordinance to more thoroughly root out prostitution.

The new ordinance comes as merchants on San Pablo Avenue say that street walkers are at their highest level in years. Police have pledged to remedy that problem and have reported 72 prostitution arrests on that block from January through June.

The ordinance passed by council requires that parlor employees and applicants wishing to obtain or renew a massage parlor permit undergo a criminal background check. Massage workers also must provide documentation that they have completed 500 hours of training at a licensed massage school.

If the background check shows that an operator has a history of crimes that are of a sexual or violent nature, a permit will be refused. Additionally, the city can close a parlor after just one violation instead of two.

The previous ordinance failed to provide a strict standard to restrict prostitution at massage parlors, said Assistant City Attorney Zach Cowan.

He noted that after a police sting uncovered prostitution at the Golden Gypsy Massage Parlor last fall, the city’s efforts to close the shop ran into red tape. Because the sting operation was the parlor’s first recorded violation, the city had to wait several months and rely on the Zoning Adjustment Board to shut down the parlor due to zoning violations.

Massage workers were concerned about the bill’s ramifications. One worker at Tiki’s Hawaiian Massage on University Avenue said that she did not have 500 hours of schooling and that massage school was too expensive for some massage workers to complete. “Most of us here are working moms, it would cost $5,000 to get 500 hours of massage school,” she said.

Tuesday’s vote is the latest council effort to regulate massage parlors. Last year council passed a moratorium on massage parlors on University and Shattuck avenues saying that they did not fit in with a family oriented atmosphere.

Councilmembers said they did not expect law-abiding massage parlors to face harassment under the new ordinance.

“We have a live and let live attitude,” said Councilmember Donna Spring. “I can think of two parlors that might be connected to prostitution, but no one has complained.”

Linda Maio's recent letter (Forum, Sept. 7-8) attempts to make a case that Berkeley needs to develop high density housing. But her emotional plea is poorly thought out. She laments that many people who work in Berkeley cannot afford to live here and that much of the traffic and parking problems result from people commuting here to work. She asks that Berkeley develop affordable housing for everyone who works here or grew up here. But she doesn't bother to consider the flip side of her argument: A very high number of Berkeley residents commute to work in San Francisco, Marin, Silicon Valley and other parts of the East Bay. She also doesn't consider that traffic congestion is caused by the many residents of other local cities who commute to Berkeley for the cultural events, stores and restaurants.

Linda Maio maintains that the imbalance between jobs and housing in Berkeley necessitates developing more housing. But she fails to consider our many neighboring communities, most of which provide more housing than jobs. More importantly, I suspect that examining the statistics will show that as many as 50 percent of Berkeley residents work elsewhere. This too creates traffic and congestion. And many people who work in Berkeley also choose to live elsewhere, in more suburban settings like Lafayette, Moraga, Albany and El Cerrito.

Fundamentally it is a mistake for Berkeley to look at itself in isolation. We need to look at the entire Bay Area as a region which should provide sufficient housing for the people who work here. But people live one place and work in another for a great variety of reasons. And Berkeley is already quite dense compared to other neighboring cities, and does provide more residential housing for its size than any other city in the Bay Area (with the exception of San Francisco). There is a genuine need for appropriate development in Berkeley but it is preposterous to demand that our city provide housing for everyone who works here or grew up here, unless we are also willing to demand that those Berkeley residents who work in other cities leave and move elsewhere.

Clearly that is a ridiculous proposition. While reasonable people may differ on the desirable degree of density, I think we all agree that there is an upper limit to development in Berkeley beyond which it will cease to be an attractive place to live.

Hundreds of cheering supporters gathered at St. Joseph’s the Worker Church this morning to bid farewell to Father William O’Donnell as he left to begin a six month sentence at Atwater Federal Prison in Merced County.

O’Donnell, the 72-year-old pastor at St. Joseph’s, at 1640 Addison St., was convicted of civil disobedience and trespassing last year after leading 46 demonstrators around a chain link fence into the Fort Benning military base in Georgia. They were protesting the School of the Americas (SOA), a training facility for Latin American military personnel.

The scene on the steps of the Berkeley church was far from somber. In fact, it resembled a festive rally more than a farewell. Laughing and smiling as he greeted the crowd, O’Donnell joked about the experience ahead.

“God help the warden,” he said, “That judge is just silly to put a saint like me in jail.” O’Donnell acknowledged that having a jubilant crowd send him off raised his spirits.

Dolores Huerta of the United Farmworkers was among those who showed up to wish O’Donnell farewell and to build support for further protests against the military school. “We have learned from the farmworkers movement that it only takes a few people to get organized. We must give our time and our resources to shut down the SOA.”

The crowd, which spilled out of the church and onto Addison Street, included mayoral candidate Tom Bates. Bates said he was looking forward to praying with O’Donnell on Election Day and collecting his absentee ballot.

Parishioners of St. Joseph’s are known for social activism. Many who attended the rally have served time in jail for civil disobedience. “One of our main missions is social justice,” said religion teacher Thea Hicks, standing among a group of students from the parish school. “We like to expose the kids to that. This is their community.”

The congregation hopes to send 100 people to Fort Benning this year for what has become an annual protest. Each will wear shirts reading “We are here in place of Father Bill.”

“He is a great example to live by,” said activist Owen Murphy. “He works the gospel among the people. That is what Jesus Christ did.”

O’Donnell, who has been arrested 224 times because of his activism, is one in a long line of religious leaders who have protested U.S. military involvement abroad.

Central America became a focus for religious leaders following the 1989 deaths of six Jesuit priests and two housekeepers in El Salvador. A 1993 Congressional investigation linked the murders to the SOA.

Over the years, protests against the SOA were often organized to assure civil demonstrations. However, after Sept. 11, the SOA heightened security and tightened down on the demonstrations.

“We tried to explain that 10,000 people at the school was a prime target for any suicide bomber,” said Pentagon spokesperson Kenneth LaPlante.

Despite warnings, protesters on Nov. 1 marched as planned and many were arrested for crossing military boundaries.

Today, the SOA is officially closed. In its place is the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, which opened in October 2000. Officials say that much has changed in the military training at the institute, but activists disagree.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, currently has 111 co-sponsors for a bill that would close the institute.

SACRAMENTO — The nation was placed on its second highest terror alert level for the first time Tuesday, and Gov. Gray Davis ordered extra security at state buildings and memorial events.

“The reality is, all the things we could have done we’re a step ahead by doing it all last night,” said California Highway Patrol Commissioner D.O. “Spike” Helmick.

The CHP began its heightened state of alert Monday night, and will remain at that level until early Friday morning.

“So far it’s business as usual,” Helmick said. “Do all the things we’ve been practicing for the last year.”

Davis ordered the CHP to beef up security at state buildings and to work with local police to safeguard Sept. 11 events, though he said “there is still no credible threat to the United States, as I understand it.”

Ceremonies at the state Capitol on Wednesday will include heavy security, said press secretary Steve Maviglio, including flyovers by three combat-ready F-16 fighters, both as part of the ceremony and to provide security.

Travis Air Force Base officials said all Air Force bases were increasing security as a precaution.

Davis joined other governors in a conference call with Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge before Ridge and Attorney General John Ashcroft said the nation would go to an “orange” alert signaling a “high risk” of attack. It was the first time the heightened alert was imposed since the system was developed after the terrorist attacks a year ago Wednesday.

The threats appeared most directed against “U.S. interests overseas,” said Ashcroft, but Davis said the government was wise to take no chances since the domestic attacks a year ago.

One of the official guidelines for an orange alert calls for government officials to be prepared to move their operations to alternate locations. California shifted its state operations to the CHP Academy in West Sacramento for a day after last year’s attacks, and is ready to do so again if needed, Helmick said.

However, “there’s been no indication the governor wants to do that,” Helmick said.

As part of the stepped up state actions, about 5,400 of the CHP’s 6,000 officers are working during the higher state of alert, Helmick said. That’s about 50 percent more officers on duty than usual, he added.

Truck weigh stations are open around the clock to monitor large trucks. Local police departments also are on alert.

Mechanical problems had grounded most of the highway patrol’s airplanes, but the manufacturer has lent the state enough planes to bring the department back to full strength, Helmick said.

Those planes, and the department’s helicopters, will be flying around the clock to watch bridges, roads, power plants and transmission lines, aqueducts and other potential targets, Helmick said. Ground patrols also are being increased.

Patrols by National Guard troops and other agencies will continue at the Golden Gate Bridge, which has showed up in terrorist videotapes and in threat warnings passed on by the federal government, Davis said.

State, federal and local law enforcement will continue sharing information through the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center, and CHP officers flying on in-state flights will continue providing an extra layer of security, Davis said.

Though there are no guarantees, Davis said, “I believe we’re doing everything conceivable to provide safety to our 35 million Californians.”

He asked residents to go about their lives even as they remember the victims and heroes of the attacks, “but to remain vigilant” and call police if they see something unusual.

The governor also asked residents to be especially tolerant of other religions and nationalities during the memorial period.

“This was a searing experience for all Americans,” Davis said Monday. “We hope and pray it never happens again.”

Davis is scheduled to speak at a 45-minute ceremony at the Capitol Wednesday morning. Davis will call a statewide moment of silence at 8:46 a.m. PDT, during the ceremony.

Also, roughly 30 relatives of Sept. 11 victims from California, and five who survived the attacks on the twin towers, are scheduled to attend the ceremony.

Police are still looking for an adult male who allegedly robbed a woman at gunpoint last Thursday. Police said a woman returned home in her car at 9:17 p.m. on the 1800 block of Stuart Street. When she exited her car a male put a gun to her head a demanded her wallet and cell phone. The woman complied and the male was seen running westbound toward Grant Street. The suspect is described as a black male, late 20s about 6 feet tall and 210 pounds. The gun was described as a black pistol.

n Drunk Driving

Miguel Cervantez Diaz, 22, was arrested for driving under the influence outside 1099 San Pablo Ave. at 3:51 a.m. Sunday.

n Stolen Laptops

A burglar stole two laptop computers from an apartment on the 2200 block of Haste Street about 7:30 p.m. Sunday. Police believe the burglar entered the home through a kitchen window.

Sept. 11, 2001 Berkeley residents awoke to find that the country they believed impenetrable had been attacked. Mayor Shirley Dean was among those who stared in shock and disbelief as the TV news played and replayed the brutal assault on the twin towers and the Pentagon. The vision of planes crashing into buildings and people hurling themselves from windows high above Manhattan seemed unreal, more like a made-for-TV drama. “At first you don’t believe it,” Dean said.

Soon reality set in. An enemy had penetrated U.S. soil and killed thousands. For some the dead included family and friends. To most of us the dead were strangers; but the media quickly acquainted us with their identities.

One was Mark Bingham, the openly gay 31-year-old former UC Berkeley rugby player. The Associated Press reported that Bingham and others allegedly fought off the terrorists, causing United Airlines Flight 93 from Newark, N.J., to San Francisco to crash outside Pittsburgh, thus preventing the assailants from reaching a target.

To ease their grief, people in Berkeley and across the nation turned to loved ones, places of worship and public memorials such as the ceremony held on the night of the attacks at Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park.

“I felt so helpless at home and wanted to be with other people, to have a community to share this tragedy with,” said Nadja Lazansky, who with her 9-year-old daughter

was among some 300 people attending the vigil. “It was very uplifting and personally I feel better,” she said that night.

The event brought together public officials and leaders from many faiths – Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Catholic and Buddhist. Prayers and speakers warned against a rush to retaliate.

“There will be turbulent days ahead and whatever action is taken it has to be with humanity,” Marvis Peoples of the Liberty Hill Baptist Church said. “You can’t fight evil with evil.”

City out of sync

Such thoughts proved to be out of step with the national mood.

On Sept. 11 The Associated Press reported a senior administration official saying that President George W. Bush was considering a range of military options targeting Osama bin Laden and perhaps Afghanistan.

“We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them,” the president said.

His rhetoric in the following months became increasingly militaristic: “Every nation now must oppose this enemy, or be, in turn, its target,” he said in an October speech.

“Those who hate all civilization and culture and progress, those who embrace death to cause the death of the innocent, cannot be ignored, cannot be appeased. They must be fought.” The reaction in Berkeley in the weeks following Sept. 11 and the bombing of Afghanistan was predictable. In the city where pacifist Lew Hill had founded KPFA radio a half-century earlier, where professors had refused to sign a loyalty oath avowing they were not communists, where the Free Speech Movement was born and the anti-Vietnam War movement was powerful, it came as no surprise that the local response to the war against terrorism would be against a military solution. “Our grief is not a call to war,” became the mantra.

And while Bush asserted that the attack was the result of foreigners’ hatred of American freedoms, others said the United States was hated because its policies hurt poorer nations.

Councilmember Linda Maio was among those who searched for more complex answers: “We need to ask how the perpetrators could have reached such levels of hatred and frustration that they would plan such acts and give their lives,” she wrote. “Such anger can only have been constructed over time, through a combination of historical events resulting in a deep sense of threat and sustained exclusion. Our nation's response has everything to do with whether we reinforce this alienation and thus provide the soil, seeds, and nutrients for future cycles of revenge and violence. Or whether it changes.”

And so the memorial vigils of the first weeks gave way to anti-war demonstrations in which thousands of protesters turned out on campus, in town and across the bay in San Francisco.

At every rally, however, protesters faced pro-war demonstrators, many aligned with UC Berkeley’s Young Republicans. Tony Banks, then a sophomore, was among the counterdemonstrators at an October rally.

“No country is perfect,” he said, “and there are things in the U.S. I disagree with, but now is not the time for that because there was a strike against our country and we need to unite as a people.”

The war against terrorism has been, in fact, far different from Vietnam and demonstrations in its opposition proved to be much smaller. Not only was there no draft to enrage young people, there were few casualties among U.S. troops. Body bags returning have not become an issue. And, as Banks and others pointed out, this time U.S. soil had been violated.

Flag flap

So even in this counterculture city, flags sprung up. Most bore the standard stars and stripes but many were altered to include a peace symbol.

Meanwhile, the fire department quietly hung large U.S. flags on its trucks. Berkeley firefighters felt a strong connection with the New York firefighters who suffered. The flags were a clear message of their solidarity.

To the city, however, the flags were potential targets. Because the city manager feared that demonstrators at a campus anti-war rally would vandalize the flags and the trucks, he ordered their temporary removal.

The message, it seems, was poorly communicated to the firefighters, who grew furious and took their anger to the media. This would prove to be the first of many Berkeley stories over the next year that the national media would pick up on.

Michael Barone of USNEWS.com (the on-line magazine for U.S. News and World Report) posted this: “Berkeley is a city whose government banned pictures of flags on its fire trucks on the theory that they would provoke hate crimes.”

Boot to the Skull Productions, which claims to be “America’s hottest conservative website” posted this: “What is up with this town? … I find it hard to believe that any red-blooded American firefighter would refuse to fly the flag. … I am looking forward to when we start dropping some bombs on the terrorists who helped plan this tragedy. But if there are any left over, can we drop them on Berkeley? Believe me we will come out ahead if we do.”

The city issued statements and held press conferences defending its actions, but in the minds of the nation, the wacky, politically correct Berkeley had banned the flags for political reasons.

Lee stands alone

The Sept. 15 vote by U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee, D, who represents Berkeley and Oakland, to oppose the resolution to authorize the president to use force, drew similar fire from across the nation. Sept. 27, Conservative pundit David Horowitz blasted her vote in a piece posted on the Web site Americans for a Republican Majority:

“Representative Barbara Lee, democrat of Berkeley, was the only member of Congress who refused to defend her country under attack. ... Barbara Lee is not an anti-war activist, she is an anti-American communist who supports America's enemies and has actively collaborated with them in their wars against this nation,” the site said.

Less vitriolic, Mayor Shirley Dean also took issue with Lee’s vote: “It appears as if this country is taking its time to establish who did this and those people need to be brought to justice,” she told the Daily Planet. “I don’t think we should be bombing the heck out of another country and I don’t think that’s on the table. But terrorism has got to be stopped.”

Still, letters pouring into the Daily Planet from local residents expressed overwhelming support for Lee’s vote: “During these past tumultuous weeks much of the country has been whipped into a pro-vengeance, pro-war fervor. Lee’s vote does not undermine justice for the victims and their families, rather she is asserting that Congress should retain its right to check Bush’s power and maintain limits on the military’s actions,” Berkeley resident Stephanie Don wrote.

While threats against her life meant Lee had to surround herself with federal security agents, more than 3,000 people turned out in mid-October to a “thank you” event honoring her in Oakland; the city of Santa Cruz proclaimed Barbara Lee Day; despite Dean’s initial concerns, the Berkeley City Council voted a unanimous commendation for the congresswoman’s “courageous” vote. And in the March Democratic primary, Lee took 85 percent of the vote.

Council resolution takes heat

The media also made hay with Berkeley’s resolution to “ask our representatives to help break the cycle of violence, bringing the bombing to a conclusion as soon as possible, avoiding actions that can endanger the lives of innocent people in Afghanistan, and minimizing the risk to American military personnel.”

The resolution had been watered down from its original call to elected officials “to take whatever action they can to cease the bombing of Afghanistan and to seek a legal, nonmilitary resolution.”

The resolution passed a divided council vote of 5-0-4 with centrists Mayor Shirley Dean, and councilmembers Miriam Hawley, Polly Armstrong and Betty Olds abstaining and the five progressive councilmembers voting in favor of the measure.

E-mails directed to the mayor and council from around the country ran strongly in opposition to the resolution. (Measured in inches, there were about 3 inches of e-mails in opposition, to 1 inch in support.) Councilmember Linda Maio counted 600 in opposition.

“I hope the Islamic fundamentalists direct their next attack against your community,” wrote Scott Wright in an Oct. 24 e-mail.

“It’s sad to think that the only reason you are able to express your opinion is the fact that many people fought and died for your right to be wrong,” wrote Rick Lester of Minneapolis.

Then came the campaign to boycott the city’s businesses, raising the ire of the local business community. “I too will be joining the boycott of your city,” wrote Maria Raso of Santa Barbara. “I will not spend money in a city that does not support our federal government.”

Others wrote to support Berkeley, promising to go out of their way to buy in Berkeley to thwart the boycott.

And while John Gullickson’s e-mail stated simply: “You people disgust me,” Pamela Michael of Berkeley wrote: “Such courageous and principled actions on the part of our elected officials are one of the reasons I’m proud to live in this community.”

Michael Losonisky of Fort Collins, Colo., said: “You should know how much it means to many of us that we are not alone in our vision of peace and a better United States with an enlightened foreign policy.”

Maio attributed the strong nationwide reaction to media distortion. She said that a statement on the mayor’s Web site characterizing the council resolution as one “condemning U.S. anti-terrorist activity in Afghanistan,” helped fuel the nation’s emotions.

The councilmember pointed to a Contra Costa Times-UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies survey that showed 59 percent of Berkeley residents expressing support for the resolution once they had been told what it said.

Amidst the horror and confusion of the events of Sept. 11, Maio said she looked for something positive to come from the grief.

“Let us have the wisdom and strength … to seize the opportunity to construct a better future for ourselves and, indeed, the world,” she said.

And in fact, while the federal government has moved to restrict some individual freedoms, local citizens and the city have been working to increase tolerance and to prepare for the possibility of a future attack.

Though many in our community knew of Ted Rosenkrantz and of the In Dulci Jubilo foundation, many more didn't have a clue until Mayor Shirley Dean last year proclaimed Sept. 10 “Ted Rosenkrantz Day” in Berkeley. On that day, the Daily Planet featured a great article honoring Ted for a lifetime of accomplishments.

Many had no idea that with no children of his own, Ted created In Dulci Jubilo Inc. (IDJ) to fulfill a lifelong dream of helping to inspire our kids. And of those who were aware of how much IDJ has done for Berkeley public schools and teachers over the past 23 years, many did not know of its founder, Ted Rosenkrantz.

Ted, a retired merchant marine, was diagnosed with melanoma cancer 23 years ago and did not expect to live long. Remembering all of the joy that he had received growing up in Berkeley schools, Ted wanted to give something back before he died. With that in mind, despite his many health problems, he worked hard as the executive director of IDJ until the year 2000. Ted Rosenkrantz accomplished more than most could ever dream of. He spent over $500,000 of his own money to enrich the lives of our kids.

A humble man, Ted Rosenkrantz was deeply touched when Mayor Dean came to his bedside in last September to present him with the Ted Rosenkrantz Day proclamation. Ted had always insisted on remaining out of the limelight, refusing to take any credit for all that he had done for Berkeley kids. He was equally moved when the school board declared Sept. 19, Ted Rosenkrantz Day in the Berkeley Unified School District.

A few days before he died, on Nov. 9, Ted told me that only wished that he had been able to do more to inspire and excite kids. I laughed and reminded him of all that he had accomplished. And I assured him that his legacy would continue to make dreams come true, inspiring teachers and students for the next 23 years.

At a time when we pause to remember how the events of September 2001 changed our lives forever, let Ted Rosenkrantz Day remind us of the hope that exists in our world, our community, and our neighborhoods because of people like Ted.

Get up to speed on open records laws, open meetings laws and sunshine ordinances. Experts, including Terry Francke of the California First Amendment Coalition, will speak.

BerkeleySunshine@Yahoo.com

Free

Wednesday, September 25

“Healing Our Hearts for the Sake of the World”

7:30 p.m

First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way

A reading by Sylvia Boorstein. Proceeds support The East Bay Dharma Center.

595-0408

$5 to $10

Saturday, September 28

Free Legal Workshop:

“Crossroads: Health and the Law.”

10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

514 58th St. at Telegraph Avenue

Navigate your way through legal issues when living with cancer or any serious illness. Panel presentation on employment, insurance and public benefits and one-on-one sessions with attorneys. Please, pre-register.

601-4040, Ext. 102 for information

or Ext. 103 to register

Free

Saturday, October 5

East Bay Solar Home Tour

10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Cedar Rose Park (first stop)

Attendees collect a map to guide them on the self-guided tour—eight homes in Albany, Berkeley and Oakland in all.

When Khemnes Fisher’s eyesight deteriorated after high school, the three-sport athlete from San Pablo worried he would never enjoy the thrill of competition again. With the help of the Bay Area Outreach and Recreation Program, however, a new world has opened up to Fisher. Participating in innovative and challenging sports and recreation programs for local disabled and visually impaired residents, Fisher and many others have found a home at BORP, a Berkeley-based nonprofit.

“I hesitated at first,” said the 35-year-old Fisher of joining BORP’s program six months ago. “I still had enough sight to play sports. But as my sight got worse I needed some kind of release.”

Providing such release and a community network for disabled athletes since 1976, the nonprofit is one of a kind in the Bay Area. The teamwork, competition and independence generated by the organization’s programming was showcased Saturday, as BORP celebrated the 17th annual Opening Day of its Youth Sports Program.

Dozens of disabled athletes sweated it out during the daylong event at the James Kenney Recreation Center in north Berkeley, playing a wide array of competitive and contact sports. The morning’s first competition pitted visually impaired athletes against one another in the innovative Goalball. In the game, athletes zip a 3-pound leather ball across a wooden court in hopes of scoring a goal against defenders lined up on the opposite side of the gym. In order to stop the ball, which makes a ringing sound as it whizzes along the floor, defenders rely on their hearing to position themselves for a block.

Though he’s still learning the sport, invented in 1946 in Germany for World War II veterans to provide a game for those blinded in combat, Fisher says he’s picked up a few of Goalball’s strategic points.

“There’s definitely a technique for blocking the ball,” he said. “The center has to work the hardest, directing the rest of the team and sliding all over the place.”

The second competition of the action-packed day featured a game of wheelchair basketball. The sport, which is played internationally by disabled athletes, largely follows the same rules as able-bodied hoops except that players may push their wheelchair forward twice in between dribbles.

As member of BORP’s Bay Cruisers wheelchair basketball team, 14-year-old Matt Escamilla says the fast-paced sport provides both fun and competition. Escamilla noted, however, that many able bodied individuals do not realize the competitive nature and skill possessed by disabled athletes.

“A lot of people think we can’t play. That gets on my nerves sometimes but we just use it as motivation,” Escamilla said.

BORP organizers and participants are quick to state that they are not a part of the Special Olympics program that organizes events for mentally and physically disabled athletes.

“A lot of the physically disabled kids in the area complained that the Special Olympics were not meeting their needs as athletes. BORP provides them with a separate and more challenging option for their different needs,” said Tim Orr, a Youth Coordinator with BORP since 1984.

Perhaps the most important part of the nonprofit’s programming, according to many participants and parents, is the sense of community and confidence developed among the athletes. Many of BORP’s older athletes assist BORP’s younger members with tips and advice learned long ago.

“The kids share things between themselves, their struggles and their challenges. Even the parents do the same thing,” said Laura Marks, whose daughter Sarah has been playing basketball with BORP for several years.

While providing a place to meet and compete, BORP also works to open doors for disabled athletes in mainstream society. Currently, the outreach program has started working to initiate policy change for disabled athletes within California’s high school sports programs.

Ideally, says BORP Director Rick Spitler, disabled athletes would be a part of high school sports programming and contribute to the success of the team. According to Spitler, disabled athletes could compete as a part of the track team, for example, facing off in a separate category against disabled athletes from other high schools but contributing to the total points of the overall meet.

Though the dynamic outreach program provides a haven for disabled athletes young and old, Spitler says gaining support from the mainstream is still a challenge.

“There’s nothing else like this in the Bay Area, which is a real problem. It [disabled sports programming] hasn’t been institutionalized yet,” Spitler said.

For now, a dedicated set of staff and volunteers keep the nonprofit thriving in north Berkeley. Staff members say they hope to expand their programming and possibly open a new center in Oakland with support from the city. Right now, the program receives a grant of $25,000 each year from the city of Berkeley along with access to the James Kenney Recreation Center, a cherished prize in a region with high demands on recreation facilities.

While balls bounced on the court and smiles beamed on the faces of the athletes at Saturday’s Opening Day, parent Laura Marks noted that there is an even larger purpose to the confidence building program, a sentiment expressed by staff, parents and participants alike.

Residents of Berkeley’s UA Homes left stranded by the Aug. 26 fire at 1040 University are on the move again.

After 49 of the 69 displaced residents spent nearly two weeks in $84 rooms at the nearby Ramada Inn, Holiday Inn Express and Golden Bear motel, the Red Cross relief tab is maxed. Management of the subsidized housing complex, Resources for Community Development (RCD), is now legally obligated to pick up the bill, and the company is expected to begin moving residents to less expensive accommodations.The four-story building, which fire officials say burned after a pile of clothes accidentally caught fire, is estimated to need about a month for repairs.

That means about $100,000 in monthly lodging for RCD until the residents can move back into their homes.

The residents will be housed at less expensive rooms at the Nash Motel, Budget Inn and Twin Peaks Motel in Berkeley, as well as single resident occupancy hotels owned by RCD in Oakland.

“We’re going to make sure everyone has a roof over their head, but we need spend a reasonable amount that won’t deplete our resources” said Kerry Williams, head of RCD.

He estimated that the Red Cross spent $80,000 to house and feed UA Homes tenants during the last two weeks.

Residents seemed content with the change of address as long as they were assured a spot in one of the Berkeley hotels.

“As long as they can provide me with a place in this city from now until the building is ready, I’ll be happy,” said Carl Johnson, a UA Homes resident. Johnson didn’t want to go to the Oakland RCD homes – the California Hotel and the Harrison Hotel – because they are known to house people who abuse drugs.

But if Williams is accurate with his guesswork, the residents will be able move back to UA Homes during the first week of October.

On Monday, an RCD architect submitted plans to renovate all but the six most-damaged rooms within William’s timeframe. The architect is waiting for city approval, expected within the week. Construction can begin soon after that.

If the building is not ready by early October, RCD will have difficulty supporting the tenants. According to Williams, RCD has a cash reserve to cover the first month, but if the renovation work is delayed, RCD will have to scale back services.

RCD is currently providing residents with far more than the law requires, city officials say. Under Berkeley’s relocation ordinance, RCD is responsible for paying a tenant the difference between the rent paid at UA Homes and rent at a temporary home. However, instead of asking the tenants – many who receive counseling for substance abuse or emotional issues – to find temporary accommodations, RCD has offered to pay for motels.

For UA Homes residents the most immediate concern is not homelessness, but hunger. RCD does not have enough money to continue the Red Cross food voucher program. Unlike the hotels where they had been staying, most of their new hotel rooms will not have a microwave to cook inexpensive food.

It is a year later, and we still face the memories of Sept. 11 horrors by honoring our heroes. I suspect the terrorists felt they were laying down their lives for their nations or families as well. Some of us are no less tearful about these memories, or actual losses, but perhaps we are more ready to ask questions about the reasons behind the terrible prices that were paid.

All wars create heroes, even those that are tragically misguided and senseless.

Since April, UC Berkeley has forbidden alcohol at fraternity parties along what is known as Greek row after a spate of underage drinking, fire code violations, injuries and near-brawls last year.

But this summer a group of about 30 students, staff, alumni and community members developed a reform plan that if approved will bring an end to the six-month moratorium.

Last week, UC Berkeley’s Dean of Students Karen Kenney signed off on the plan. Tonight the Inter-Fraternity Council, which represents UC Berkeley’s 35 fraternities, is expected to give final approval.

If the plan passes, the beer could be flowing within two weeks. That moment couldn’t come too soon for many fraternity members.

“I’m looking forward to it,” said Adam Jaffe, a sophomore and member of Zeta Beta Tau.

Before the April moratorium, fraternities faced a series of stringent rules. Security guards and guest lists were required, and partygoers had to bring their own beer or wine coolers, hand the alcohol over to a third-party vendor hired by the fraternity and wait for the vendor to check their identification before getting the beer or wine coolers back.

The new plan tightens the existing rules and adds a new one, according to Kenney. Effective immediately, fraternity leaders will give each house a score for its past adherence to the university’s drinking rules. Those that score well will be allowed to throw off the April moratorium, and begin partying with alcohol. The rest will have to wait.

The scoring system, under the new plan, will continue into the future. Those fraternities that make a poor showing will face possible discipline from the Inter-Fraternity Council as well as traditional sanctions from the university.

Kenney said she approved the plan, largely crafted by the students, because she was impressed by its “thoughtfulness.” She also said the university plans to crack down on fraternities that don’t live up to the new standards.

“We will move swiftly to revoke recognition of chapters,” she said.

But several fraternity members interviewed Monday said the plan amounted to little more than window dressing.

“I think it’s just propaganda to please the university,” said Jessie Dosanjh of Zeta Beta Tau.

Dosanjh said that the fraternities have engaged in “underground drinking” since the ban went into effect and, in a sentiment echoed by several other fraternity members, said that drinking will continue no matter what policies are in place.

But, he continued, lifting the moratorium and bringing alcohol consumption back to the surface will allow for better monitoring and a safer environment.

Matthew Kaplan, vice president of Alpha Epsilon Pi, said he hopes the new rules, combined with open, responsible parties will allow Greek row to polish its reputation.

“This gives us an opportunity to show our true colors as a community,” he said.

Still, some say the university never should have put a blanket ban in place to punish the sins of a few wayward houses.

“I actually thought the ban was pretty severe and undemocratic,” said City Councilmember Kriss Worthington, who has several fraternities in his council district. “I assume the university meant well, but I think it was done with a club instead of a ... fine-tuned instrument.”

Worthington acknowledged that some of his other constituents may have concerns about the resumption of rowdy fraternity parties, but he said plenty of students and older people unaffiliated with fraternities create similar problems.

About 2500 UC Berkeley students participate in the university’s Greek system.

Former President Richard Nixon famously said “Watch what I do, not what I say.” If the United States attacks Iraq, other nations will surely watch what we do. If the United States can attack Iraq on the speculation that it might one day acquire weapons of mass destruction, why can't India attack Pakistan, which has nuclear weapons today? The U.S. government estimates that nuclear war between India and Pakistan would immediately kill 12 million people – and many more as the long-term radiological effects took toll.

BERKELEY — Northern California’s Tibetan community cautiously welcomed a visit to China’s capital by a special envoy of Tibet’s spiritual Leader, the Dalai Lama.

Lodi Gyari, the Dalai Lama’s special envoy, was scheduled to arrive Monday in Beijing. He’s also expected to visit Tibet’s erstwhile capital, Lhasa, U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters in Washington. Lodi Gyari, the director of the International Campaign for Tibet, has an office in Washington.

Boucher said President Bush and other U.S. officials have encouraged Chinese leaders to open a dialogue with the Dalai Lama or his representatives.

While welcoming Gyari’s visit, Tibetan activists in Northern California said the Bush Administration ought to be doing more to help Tibet.

“If the Chinese respond positively to the visit, it’s a good sign,” said Tenzin Woser, a shop owner in Berkeley. “But any real changes in the relationship between China and Tibet will take a long, long time.”

Tibet — once an independent kingdom in the Himalayan plateau within China’s boundaries — was annexed by China in 1950.

The Dalai Lama fled his homeland in 1959 after Chinese soldiers crushed a popular uprising against Beijing’s rule. Since then he has lived in India, where he runs a government-in-exile in Dharmsala. The Dalai Lama has become a global advocate for Tibetan self-rule.

China, however, says Tibet is a province that it reclaimed in the 1950 annexation. Tibetan activists accuse China of systematically eliminating the Tibet language and restricting religious freedoms.

“We need to open a dialogue with China,” said Berkeley-based Tibetan activist Tashi Norbu. “But I’m not sure that China is genuine.”

Like many Tibetans living in the United States, he said Bush was neglecting the plight of Tibet.

“He’s more interested in doing business with the Chinese than helping Tibet,” said Tashi Norbu, who was born in Eastern Tibet, but has lived in the United States since he was a teenager.

Of Tibet’s approximately 6 million people, about 200,000 live in exile around the world.

Woser, a former Board member with the Berkeley-based Tibetan Association of Northern California, urged all exiled Tibetans to visit their homeland “to see the real situation.”

Your recent story, “UC Berkeley defends it patriotism,” (Sept, 6) was truly an amazing tale. It seems that to memorialize the victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the UC administrators decided to hand out white ribbons instead of the more traditional red, white and blue ribbons. They first claimed that this bizarre move was to “save money.”

The UC administrators, in their infinite sensitivity, were apparently concerned that a traditional tri-color ribbon might offend or exclude student supporters of the Taliban, the al-Qaida and the “hate America first” crowd. I can just see the headlines now: “UC student Bin Laden buddies offended by red, white and blue ribbons at UC 9-11 memorial service.”

Actually, to pick white as a color for a mourning or a memorial service is a little odd. Black is the traditional color for the expression of mourning or grief. White is the color typically associated with surrender.

Just imagine if our politically-sensitive UC administrators had been leading the American Revolution back in 1776. First off, Betsy Ross would have been unemployed; the American flag would have been a simple white sheet. At the Battle of Bunker Hill in Boston, the Americans would have simply raised their spiffy white flags and just surrendered on the spot to the British redcoat soldiers and we Brit-Americans would still be singing “Hail to the Queen,” driving on the left side of the road, eating bangers and smoking fags.

KATMANDU, Nepal — Royal Nepalese Army soldiers launched a counterattack Monday after Maoist guerrillas killed at least 57 soldiers and policemen in a mountainous area overnight, a government minister said.

Devendra Raj Kadel, the junior interior minister, said the army was fighting near Sandhikhara, about 190 miles west of Katmandu, where rebels killed 40 police and 17 soldiers hours earlier in their deadliest assault since the government lifted a state of emergency two weeks ago.

“We have reports that a group of rebels who were fleeing from Sandhikhara have been found and we have sent additional forces to combat them,” Kadel said.

Also Monday, an army bomb squad defused an explosive device planted in Katmandu’s main market. No one was injured but traffic was blocked for hours. Rebels have been blamed for a series of recent explosions in Katmandu that killed at least one soldier.

Reports from the scene of the latest attack said the rebels struck government offices in Sandhikhara around midnight Sunday as part of their increasingly bloody campaign to topple Nepal’s constitutional monarchy.

The rebels assaulted the police station and army base and then burned other government offices, including the district administration offices.

Sandhikhara has an army base with 64 soldiers and two police stations with 160 policemen stationed there, officials say.

Defense Ministry spokesman Bhupendra Poudel said the rebels also kidnapped two police officials and an assistant chief district official identified as Baburam Khatiwada, the highest-ranking government official in Sandhikhara.

The incident came a day after rebels attacked a remote mountain outpost southeast of the capital, killing at least 49 police officers.

The latest attacks began after the government on Aug. 28 lifted a state of emergency in place since late last year.

The emergency was lifted to prepare for parliamentary elections set for November. Opposition politicians expressed concerns that candidates would not be able to campaign freely during the state of emergency, which gave security forces sweeping powers to curtail civil liberties.

OAKLAND – An Alameda County prosecutor said Monday that a one-time distinguished Fremont teacher has pleaded guilty to a single felony count of possessing child pornography.

Michael Schoop, 51, of Pleasanton, was arrested in early October and originally charged with four counts of child molestation and one count of possessing child pornography. He pleaded not guilty to the charges and was released on $150,000 bail in late November.

As part of the plea deal struck Aug. 29, Schoop will be placed on five years' probation and will have to register as a sex offender, according to Deputy District Attorney Kevin Murphy. Murphy said the plea deal was made with the “understanding and knowledge” that Schoop will shortly plead guilty to similar charges in federal court.

Murphy said Schoop will probably serve at least 18 months in federal custody in that case.

Oakland police started investigating Schoop when a man who was then 45 years old alleged that Schoop – a distinguished teacher and one-time foster parent – had allegedly molested him for several years, beginning in 1972.

Oakland police investigators said at the time of Schoop's arrest that the accuser came forward after reading a laudatory newspaper article on Schoop's teaching methods.

Murphy said today that justice has been served by the plea deal.

“The victim in the case was aware of everything that was going on and is satisfied with the disposition,” Murphy said.

“Our primary goal was to have Mr. Schoop register as a sex offender so he cannot teach in California public schools and hopefully not in any other schools,”' he said.

Scientists at Lawrence National Laboratory in Berkeley recently completed a millennium-long simulation of global climate changes, further closing the accuracy gap in weather prediction.

For more than 200 uninterrupted days climate researchers from the National Center for Atmospheric Research completed the 1,000-year run on their new Community Climate System Model (CCSM2) IBM supercomputer in Berkeley.

According to Jeff Kiehel, a climate researcher scientist at NCAR who heads the CCSM2 effort, the recent simulation cuts down on temperature variations, which ultimately jeopardized the success of previous models.

“This simulation will enable climate scientists to study the variability of the climate system on decade to century time scales, which is an important aspect of climate change detection and attribution studies,” Kiehel said.

Developed by a group of climate researchers that includes scientists and software engineers alike, the CCSM2 simulates a varying degree of weather phenomena including El Nino, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the North Atlantic Oscillation.

With the need for more housing and economic growth in apparent conflict with the need to protect the environment, Berkeley has developed a new program for commercial and multi-family building projects that promotes sustainability and energy conservation that will also help meet the housing and commercial needs of Berkeley residents.

The Berkeley’s Best Builders (BBB) is a free program that helps developers remodel or construct buildings that use less energy and water, provide better lighting and indoor air quality, and are generally better for the environment than traditionally-constructed buildings. The BBB consultants’ expertise includes nontoxic material specification, renewable energy, advanced daylighting technologies, solid waste management, indoor air quality, water conservation, transportation, and several other topics.

More than two dozen development projects have already come through this program that is managed by the not-for-profit organization the Green Resource Center. Free design assistance is available from many of the country’s leading experts on indoor air quality, non-toxic building materials and furnishings, renewable energy and conservation. The intent is to create buildings that have a healthier indoor environment, with lower occupant turnover and operational costs.

The BBB program is the city’s first step in its new Green Building Initiative, which is intended to make green building the “business as usual” choice for all remodels and new construction in Berkeley. Green buildings have the advantage of using fewer of the world’s resources while being overall more comfortable and healthy to live and work in than traditionally constructed buildings.

Contractors and developers who are not familiar with green building, and are working on a new project in Berkeley may use a free BBB consultation to gather some new ideas that may save them operational costs in their development project, and improve the indoor quality and energy costs for its occupants.

For those developers already familiar with green building, a BBB consultation may be used to consult a specialist about a particular environmental problem with the project, including advanced daylighting designs to reduce overall lighting costs, such as the number of fixtures or the wattage of lamps. In order to make the best use of these consultations, they should be done very early in the pre-design phase of a project, before building design has been started.

To qualify for the BBB program, the project should not yet have been submitted for permits. Rehabilitations, new construction and gut/rebuilds are all acceptable types of projects.

Berkeley staff, in consultation with leading green professionals have developed the Green Building Primer, which introduces basic green building concepts and techniques, plus, the Reference Guide to Existing Green Building Regulations, which fully describes all environmental building requirements from federal, state and local authorities in one package, and gives helpful tips on compliance. Both are available to developers intending to build in Berkeley. Copies may be obtained through the Office of Economic Development, 2118 Milvia St.

The BBB program is fully subscribed at the moment, attesting to the desire for green design assistance. All interested designers, architects, and developers who would like to know more about the program should contact Edward Guilig, program manager, at 845-5106.

Berkeley’s Green Building Initiative, developed in consultation with the local design and construction community, has set the goal of making green building the business-as-usual choice in Berkeley. With more than two dozen successful consultations carried out to date, Berkeley’s Best Builders is our first step in that direction.

- Alice La Pierre is an energy analyst for the city of Berkeley. She promotes green building and energy conservation in Berkeley.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs has decided not to grant federal recognition to the San Francisco Bay area’s Muwekma Ohlone Indians.

Neal McCaleb, the Interior Department assistant secretary who runs BIA, said the tribe failed to document that it is a distinct community and represents a continuing government back through history. The decision was issued late Friday.

Federal recognition brings with it federal money, access to health care and the opportunity to have the government hold land in trust for tribes.

The Muwekma held early discussions with Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown to open a casino at the old Oakland Army Base. But only federally recognized tribes can take part in casino gambling.

The Muwekma had complained about the slow pace of the recognition process. Two years ago, the tribe won a federal court order to speed a decision on their status

The tribe can appeal BIA’s decision to the Interior Department’s Board of Indian Appeals.

Point Reyes seashore

celebrates 40 years

POINT REYES – Point Reyes National Seashore is celebrating its 40th anniversary this month with tours, cultural demonstrations and history presentations.

President John F. Kennedy signed legislation on Sept. 13, 1962 establishing Point Reyes as a National Park. It is the only National Seashore on the Pacific Coast.

Point Reyes receives 2.5 million visitors a year and its 80 miles of coast line is one of the top 30 visited units of the National Park system.

This weekend's events include a presentation Saturday on the birth of the Point Reyes National Seashore and a ranger-led, two-day tour of native plant and animal habitat in the area of Point Reyes Lighthouse and the dunes at Abbots Lagoon.

SAN JOSE — Using molecules as building blocks, Hewlett-Packard Co. researchers have created memory circuits 10 times more dense than today’s silicon chips under a process that could be faster and cheaper than current technology.

The advance announced Monday could lead to more memory within a smaller space than what is now possible.

The high-tech industry’s growth has been driven by packing more transistors — or switches — into smaller slivers of silicon. Within the next decade, however, current technology is expected to reach physical limits.

Researchers are looking for approaches that could continue the pace of innovation with silicon or alternatives.

Williams, who presented his findings at a symposium for the 175th anniversary of the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden, said the high-density memory his team created fits inside a square micron. That’s so small that 1,000 of the circuits could fit on the end of a strand of human hair.

The memory is rewritable and can preserve information even after voltage is cut. The behavior is similar to today’s flash memory, commonly used in digital cameras, music players and cell phones to store information even after a device has been turned off.

The difference is that the new memory could be much cheaper to make.

Conventional semiconductor products are created by etching transistors into silicon by shining light onto light-sensitive chemicals. Williams’ approach is more akin to contact printing used in creating vinyl records — but at a very small scale.

The masters were created in about a day. They were then pressed into a polymer layer on a silicon wafer, and then into a single layer of electronically switchable molecules on top of the silicon.

“It took just a few minutes to make an imprint,” Williams said.

Still, the technology is at least five years from being commercially available, Williams said.

“Things are moving along faster than we anticipated,” he said. “Even given that, we’re just now demonstrating feasibility, and it’s a long way from feasibility to product.”

7 p.m. East Bay peace groups have come together to sponsor a vigil at Lakeside Park. Meet at The Pillars at Lake Merritt to make peace lanterns and to join in a walk around the lake. Participants are encouraged to wear white and to bring names, photos, or images to incorporate in the memorial. This event is organized by American Muslims Intent on Learning and Activism, Berkeley Interfaith Women for Peace, California Peace Action, Ecumenical Peace Institute, East Bay Coalition Against the War, Global Exchange, Inochi/Plutonium Free Futures, Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California, A Jewish Voice for Peace, Not In Our Name, Peoples' NonViolent Response Coalition, September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, Western States Legal Foundation. For information contact Eve Lindi at elindi@msn.com or go to http://www.pnvrc.net

San Francisco

7:30 to 10 p.m. Dance Brigade presents Women Against War: A Vision For Peace, an artistic intervention of women's voices and visions. Some of San Francisco Bay Area's most respected women artists and leaders will come together for a ritual blending of art and politics at SF War Memorial & Performing Arts Center, 401 Van Ness at McAllister. Tickets are $20 in advance. $25 at the door. For information go to www.CityBoxOffice.com. Call 392-4400.

Berkeley

7 a.m. A commemoration ceremony in honor of the firefighters, police officers, and civilians who died in the attacks at fire station No. 2, 2029 Berkeley Way, at the corner of Henry Street. The ceremony is sponsored in collaboration with the Alameda and Contra Costa County municipal and county fire departments.

9 a.m. A ceremonial bell ringing at Martin Luther King Civic Center Building, 2180 Milvia St., between Allston Way and Center Street, will signal a moment of silence in all city offices.

6:30 p.m. Berkeley’s faith community will conduct an Interfaith Candlelight Vigil at the Martin Luther King Civic Center Park, Martin Luther King Jr. Way between Allston Way and Center Street. All community members are invited.

UC Berkeley

5:45 a.m. Campanile bells will toll for five minutes to mark the moment of the first attack in New York. The bells will toll three more times in the hours that follow to mark each subsequent attack.

9 to 10 a.m. Interfaith Circle of Remembrance. Words, music and ritual invoking the spirit of prayer and unity of all people at the Sproul tree line.

Noon. After the chiming of the hour a moment of silence will be observed campuswide followed by the tolling of the Campanile bells.

12:10 to 1 p.m. The University Chorus, Chamber Chorus and University Symphony will perform. Reflective music from various cultures and centuries at Hertz Hall. Chancellor Robert M. Berdahl will speak at the beginning of the concert. Seating in Hertz Hall is limited.

12:10 to 1 p.m. Student government leaders will host a program of music, poetry and reflection on the steps of Sproul Hall. Chancellor Robert M. Berdahl will share his thoughts. Twelve students will be selected randomly to represent diverse views.

7:30 p.m. “To Mourn, to Reflect, to Dream: An Interfaith Commemoration of 9/11” at the Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California, 1433 Madison St. Sponsored by the Oakland Coalition of Congregations. For information contact Rev. Roger Scott Powers at MPCRPowers@aol.com.

San Francisco

5:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Peace gathering and concert at Justin Hermann Plaza (Market Street at the Embarcadero) culminating in a large spiritual/cultural program. Free.

Noon to 1 p.m. Break for Peace Bread Lunch Program. Music and words of truth from diverse communities that have experienced violence Community speeches and performances by Copper Wimmin, Tibetan Song and Dance Performance Group, Eth-Noh-Tec and Tibetan Monks.

Oakland

1 to 5 p.m. Join Youth Space, Destiny Arts Center and other Bay Area youth organizations for spoken word, music, and performance about how youth have been victimized by the war on terrorism through cuts in education spending, the crackdown on dissent, hate crimes against Arab youth and youth of color, and more. Frank Ogawa Plaza at 14th Street and Broadway. Invited performers include the Coup, Company of Prophets, MC Tommy Goodwin, local break dancing crews, and YouthSpeaks poets. Information: (415) 255-7296, Ext. 263, Email: peace@globalexchange.org

Many Berkeley residents got frightening wake-up calls Sept. 11, 2001 from friends and family across the country.

Councilmember Betty Olds couldn’t remember who called her. Her first instinct after getting the news, though, was to turn on the TV “It was so horrible I couldn’t really take it in,” she said. “I still feel [the attacks] occurred somewhere else, not in this country.”

The city’s Chief Health Officer Dr. Poki Namkung got a call from a colleague who told her to turn on her TV, which she did. “It still held a veil of unreality,” Namkung said, adding that the magnitude of the event didn’t sink in until she visited the site of the former World Trade Center in February.

Arrietta Chakos’ story was very different. Chief of staff to the city manager, Chakos was returning from a three-week vacation in Europe with her 18-year old daughter.

On the airplane some two hours outside of San Francisco, she noticed that the plane’s digital maps had stopped operating. It was about 11 a.m. when flight attendants said the plane was being rerouted to Calgary, Canada: Air space in the United States was full, they told the passengers.

That seemed bizarre to Chakos, a seasoned traveler. But she didn’t worry. The flight crew appeared cheery.

On their arrival at Calgary, however, Chakos saw Mounties with shotguns on the tarmac. “We were there for one hour before we deplaned,” Chakos said. “They would not tell us what happened.”

Other passengers were calm and cheerful. They helped seniors off the plane, Chakos said.

“No one complained,” she added.

The passengers were led into a part of the airport where there were no television sets and were kept there for about 40 minutes. Finally a security officer told Chakos that the American borders had been closed: “There was some kind of attack on the U.S.”

The passengers were held for another 45 minutes, searched thoroughly and finally told what had happened.

Chakos, whose work includes helping with the city’s emergency planning, said she thought the situation was handled well. “It’s best to maintain security,” she said. “The Canadians were so kind.”

SAN FRANCISCO — California museums are commemorating the one-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks with photography exhibits, film screenings and in Silicon Valley, a huge American flag made of red, white and blue CDs.

With images of the attacks still emblazoned in people’s minds, museum curators say they’ve made an effort to approach the event from different perspectives.

The precise moments of the attacks will be marked at the libraries for Presidents Nixon and Reagan in Southern California with candle-lightings, bell-ringings, the Pledge of Allegiance, national anthems and even a helicopter fly over.

The Oakland Museum is taking a look back at California disasters over the past century and examines the state’s level of disaster preparedness in their exhibit, “State of Emergency.”

In Sacramento, the Golden State Museum will waive its admission fee on Sept. 11 and will feature an exhibit on the role of the state in responding to the attacks, said Ross McGuire, the museum’s director.

“We are somewhat uniquely prepared for this,” McGuire said. “We are a museum about democracy.”

The museum focuses on California, including a display about its inherent natural disasters, such as earthquakes, McGuire said. The state’s preparedness to respond to natural disasters helped it respond to the man-made crisis.

Muslims are the focus of an exhibit at the Arts Commission Gallery in San Francisco’s city hall titled “Freedom and Fear” with black and white photographs by Rick Rocamora of local Muslim residents coping with racial backlash after Sept. 11. The exhibit is presented in conjunction with “Hall of Reflections” by photographer Taraneh Hernarni that records the experiences of Iranian immigrants in America.

San Francisco’s Exploratorium is showing a series of independent films, highlighted by a screening of “Underground Zero,” a collection of 13 short films by artists that were frustrated by what they call the “superficial rhetoric” of media and government after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Also included in the film series is a 1945 documentary short, “In the Street,” by writer James Agee and “Kristallnacht,” a 1979 experimental short by Chick Strand that reflects on the night in 1938 when Nazi youths burned and looted thousands of Jewish synagogues and businesses throughout Germany.

Liz Keim, the Exploratorium’s film director, said the films allow audiences to reflect on Sept. 11 in different ways.

“There’s references to other things that allow us to think about the events around us without didactic narratives,” she said.

The city’s Legion of Honor plans on hosting an “Interfaith Night” on the eve of the anniversary. The event features its current exhibition, “Eternal Egypt,” presenting an ancient civilization in which a variety of faiths coexisted. It offers a unique lesson for today’s society, said Pam McDonald, a spokeswoman for the Legion of Honor.

The Tech, San Jose’s technology museum, chose to commemorate the event by displaying an American flag made of 1,000 CDs on which local schoolchildren wrote their hopes for the future of technology. On them, they envisioned the ability to convert garbage to fuel, flying cars and a cure for AIDS.

“We wanted to do something that reflected who we are with a visual statement about being part of the community,” said Kris Covarrubias, a spokeswoman for The Tech, who added that they used CDs because “they’re reflective of technology and Silicon Valley.”

LOS ANGELES — Warner Bros. has become the latest studio to offer some of its films for a limited time for download over the Internet.

The studio will offer some of its biggest recent titles, including “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” as well as older titles such as “Mars Attacks,” over CinemaNow, a video-on-demand service that offers films for viewing on computers.

CinemaNow offered films from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in a 30-day trial earlier this year. The current arrangement with Warner Bros. will run until the end of the year and may be extended.

While Warner Bros. has offered its films for viewing on demand before, this is the first time they will be offered for download.

Films such as “Harry Potter” can be downloaded for a fee of $3.99 for 24-hour viewing. Older films from the Warner Bros. home video library can be downloaded for $2.99 for the same period.

The studio said a key factor in allowing people to download digital copies of its films was CinemaNow’s anti-piracy technology, supplied by Microsoft Corp.

“As we would with any entrant into the area, we investigated their technology and found it to meet our digital rights management requirements and reached reasonable economic terms,” said Jeffrey Calman, executive vice president of video on demand and pay per view for Warner Home Video.

Neither side disclosed the financial terms of the agreement.

The individual files are as large as 700 megabytes and can take as long as two hours to download even over high-speed broadband connections. They contain digital locks that prevent the files from being copied. The license expires after 24 hours, rendering the file useless unless the license is renewed.

Berkeley may become the first California city to protect consumers from financial companies that sell personal information.

Councilmember Linda Maio is recommending that the city manager develop an ordinance that would prohibit banks, insurance companies, stock brokerages and other financial institutions that do business in Berkeley from sharing confidential consumer data without written permission from customers.

“I was quite appalled to hear that some companies could sell information to other companies to look for a pattern of buying” said Maio. She said it’s wrong for credit card companies, for example, to sell financial statements about drug purchases to the customer’s potential insurance company.

Maio’s proposal comes in response to the defeat of a state privacy ordinance Aug. 31. Drafted by state Sen. Jackie Speier, D-San Mateo, Senate Bill 773 would have made California the first state in the nation to require financial institutions to ask customer permission before sharing information.

Lobbyists for financial companies reportedly spent more than $20 million to defeat the bill.

Maio’s proposal, which is scheduled for consideration at the Sept. 10 City Council meeting, would instead put the onus of safeguarding privacy on finance companies. Companies would be prohibited from using consumer information for profit unless they received written permission to do so.

A company that fails to comply would be subject to city fines. Although Maio said she will rely on city staff to propose penalties, she said the bill will be modeled after a recent San Mateo County ordinance that imposes fines from between $2,500 and $250,000 depending on the number of offenses.

Maio envisions a complaint-driven system enforced by a new arm of the Berkeley Police Department. The city would likely have to hire new staff to run the program she said, but fines would cover the cost of implementation.

Industry leaders argue that sharing information allows finance companies to better serve clients, but consumer advocates counter that the information is often used to sell unnecessary or inferior products to less sophisticated consumers.

Berkeley is now one of several California cities considering privacy legislation. San Mateo County passed the first-ever privacy ordinance Aug. 6, and the cities of Daly City, Burlingame and Belmont are considering ordinances as well.

Maio expects her fellow city council members to support her proposal. “I don’t see how anyone could oppose safeguarding people’s privacy,” she said.

Smart growth has come to the Bay Area. Smart growth means designing development to minimize environmental impacts. It focuses development near transit centers to decrease auto use, traffic and air pollution. It emphasizes high density urban “infill” development to preserve open space. These are laudable goals. The Association of Bay Area Government is now trying to apply smart growth to planning the Bay Area.

Undoubtedly, smart growth is less damaging than suburban sprawl. However, that doesn’t mean it’s environmentally benign. Smart growth, like any development, puts pressure on regional infrastructure – the roads, water lines, sewers, transit facilities, etc. And Infrastructure costs money. Expanding development generally means expanding infrastructure – building more roads, water and sewer lines, etc. ABAG’s analysis assumes such expansion can and will occur, though cost isn’t considered. However, infrastructure needs can’t always be met that simply.

For example, water is a limited resource. The East Bay is already near the limits of its water supplies, as we are reminded every drought. Supplies can be stretched through conservation, but fisheries are already suffering from current river diversions. Our water supplies are running out. Similarly, BART is approaching its capacity. The only way to add capacity is to build new lines – exorbitantly expensive if feasible. Many East Bay sewer mains and treatment plants are also nearing capacity. Adding sewer capacity is also not a trivial matter.

In short, the Bay Area has only limited capacity to handle growth. Infrastructure limits need to be taken into account in planning the future. Otherwise, we will bring upon ourselves very avoidable future crises.

Unfortunately, ABAG’s planning hasn’t considered infrastructure limitations. It just accepts local governments’ growth projections, which are driven by the quest for tax revenue. ABAG’s smart growth plan may be better than unrestrained sprawl, but it will still make the Bay Area an unpleasant place to live. It’s up to us to decide if that’s what we want for our future. If not, we must insist that ABAG consider the Bay Area’s carrying capacity.

With an opportunistic offense and a bend-but-don’t-break defense, the Cal Bears improved to 2-0 with a 34-13 win over New Mexico State on Saturday at Memorial Stadium.

The Bears were actually outgained by the Aggies, 330 yards to 300, but took advantage of some great field position thanks to the defense and special teams. Cal’s four touchdown drives covered a total of 113 yards, including efforts of 15 and seven yards.

The Cal defense, led by rush end Tully Banta-Cain’s 4 sacks and forced fumble, kept the Aggies (0-2) out of the endzone until a last-minute consolation touchdown with the game all but over. Four times the visitors drove inside the 20-yard line, but two field goals were all the Aggies could muster before the final drive in front of a crowd of 24,619.

“Our defense did a good job keeping them out of the endzone,” Cal head coach Jeff Tedford said. “They really stepped up when they had to.”

The Bears forced two turnovers, both on fumbles, that led to Cal scores, and the special teams setup two second-half touchdowns. Wideout LaShaun Ward, who caught a 15-yard pass from quarterback Kyle Boller for the Bears first score, returned a kickoff 43 yards in the third quarter, leaving just 47 yards for Boller and the offense to cover. Eight plays later, tailback Joe Igber cut back for a four-yard touchdown run and a 24-6 lead.

Cal’s final touchdown came courtesy of defensive tackle Lorenzo Alexander, who blocked a New Mexico State punt to give the Bears the ball on the 7-yard line. Boller dove over the top of the line from the 1 to seal the win.

The Bears were handed a short field to start the game, as New Mexico State head coach Tony Samuel tried a little trickery with an onside kick. One of Samuel’s players touched the ball before it went the requisite 10 yards, giving Cal the ball on the New Mexico State 44. After Boller converted a 4th-and-1 with a 15-yard naked bootleg run, he hit Ward between two defenders to open the scoring.

After the teams traded field goals, Cal defensive tackle Josh Beckham wrapped up fullback Rambo Fiaseu on a plunge into the line, then ripped the ball out of his hands with Josh Gustaveson recovering on the 15-yard line. Igber picked up nine yards on a draw, then Boller found tight end Tom Swoboda on a play-action pass for a six-yard score, putting the Bears up 17-3.

With all that good field position, the Cal offense was productive without producing a lot of yardage. Boller threw for just 190 yards on 19-of-32 passing, but he also didn’t throw an interception for the second game in a row, a first in his Cal career. His long passes were either well-covered or dropped by his receivers, so Boller settled for throwing short hitches to his receivers, screens to Igber and play-action passes to Swoboda, who had a career-high six catches for 45 yards.

“You always want to make the big play, but the defense was playing off my receivers,” Boller said. “The deep balls just weren’t there.”

Tedford was impressed by his quarterback’s patience against an Aggie defense that was content to sit back and wait for a mistake that never came.

“Kyle was pretty sharp today. He made good decisions and ran the huddle and the offense very efficiently,” Tedford said. “He’s going to get better every week.”

The Bears’ defense looked shaky to start the game, as Aggie quarterback Buck Pierce ripped off some big gains on option keepers on the opening drive. But after a 33-yard keeper the Cal defense started to figure out how to defend the option, a good sign for a team that will face option-heavy Air Force in two weeks. Pierce finished the day with just 62 yards on 20 carries, although those numbers were deflated by the Bears’ four sacks, and left the game late in the third quarter with a bruised shoulder.

The Aggies didn’t help themselves with eight penalties for 85 yards, including a holding penalty that wiped out a 55-yard touchdown pass from Pierce to Chris Lumpkin. New Mexico State ended up with no points to show for that drive. Another drive that made it down to the Cal 8-yard line stalled when a personal foul on offensive lineman Shalimar Jackson and a Banta-Cain sack drove them back to the 33, forcing kicker Dario Aguiniga to launch a career-long 50-yard field goal just to salvage three points for a 17-6 deficit.

“We had too many penalties and mental mistakes,” Pierce said. “When playing a Pac-10 school like Cal, you just can’t make those kind of mistakes.”

It’s been quite a while since an opposing player gave Cal that kind of respect, but the Bears will face a much stiffer challenge this Saturday against No. 15 Michigan State. Tedford knows the Spartans will be a formidable foe, but he sees plenty of room for improvement from his own team.

“The good news is that we’re 2-0 and we haven’t played our best yet by any means,” he said. “We’ve still got a long way to go. We have a major challenge coming up to go on the road and play a great Michigan State team.”

Banta-Cain, who had recorded 9 1/2 sacks in the last three games going back to Rutgers last season, said the Michigan State game has been circled on his calendar for a long time.

“It’s going to be our first real test of the season,” he said. “Our goal was to be 2-0 going into that game, and we’ve done that. We’re pumped up and confident.”

Editor’s note: This is the first of a three-part series exploring local reaction to last year’s terrorist attacks. Look for part II in tomorrow’s Daily Planet.

Shahaub Roudbari, who graduated from Berkeley High School this summer, got word of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks before he arrived at school that day. But it took some time for the news to settle.

“The mood, at first, was curiosity,” he said. “It took a long time for it to dawn on people what actually happened.”

For Oliver Meyer, who also graduated in June, the news hit suddenly with an announcement in physics class.

“People didn’t know what to say,” Meyer noted. “The teacher was almost crying.”

With the one-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks in New York City, Washington D.C. and Pennsylvania arriving Wednesday, Berkeley’s school community is reflecting on the horrors of last September and planning to commemorate the attacks this week.

Activities will range from the traditional moment of silence to a special first grade art project at Malcolm X Arts & Academic Magnet School. Students, according to Principal Cheryl Chinn, will build lanterns, attach messages of peace and float them on Lake Merritt in Oakland during a peace march Tuesday evening.

This sort of approach strikes a chord in a city long associated with the peace movement.

“I think it would be great to see this as an opportunity for kids to bring peace to the world,” said Cynthia Papermaster, parent of a Berkeley High student and Board of Education candidate, describing her hopes for the district’s commemoration.

Peace was a concern for some students in the immediate aftermath of the attacks last year. On Oct. 17, members of a group called Students Halt Revenge and War Under Bush, or SHRUB, held a small anti-war rally in Civic Center Park.

Then-sophomore Mollie Dutton Starbuck read a letter to President George W. Bush that said, in part, “The terrorists want holy war, and that is what you want to give them. Holy war, an oxymoron from the oxiest of morons: you.”

Students also raised concerns about racial profiling of Middle Eastern students in the wake of the attacks. Members of two youth groups, Cultural Unity and Youth Together held a series of workshops on the topic in late September.

In the classroom, according to Berkeley High art teacher Sally Woolfer, the terrorist attacks came out in students’ work.

“We had a lot of amazing art,” she said. “That was a great outlet.”

But students interviewed Friday said that, after an initial burst of activity, the issue faded into the background quickly.

“It didn’t come up too often,” said Sean Dugar, who graduated from Berkeley High this summer and is making a run for the Board of Education this November.

Joan Edelstein, president of the Berkeley High School Parent Teacher Student Association, said she was surprised by the lack of engagement on campus last year.

“We’d hope to see more of an active response among our kids,” she said. “It’s a little disconcerting.”

Board President Shirley Issel said Berkeley’s geographic distance from Ground Zero may have played a role.

“We’re very far away from New York City,” said Issel, who is a psychotherapist. “We’re really protected from the impact of 9/11.”

She said that sense of distance may explain why the board, which will meet Wednesday night on the one-year anniversary of the attacks, has no grand commemoration planned.

“I think our need to do something on the anniversary is not as great as it is for those who are closer to Ground Zero,” she said.

Still, Issel predicted in a Friday interview, members will have something solemn to say about the terrorist attacks Wednesday night – just one day after first graders from Malcolm X Elementary are scheduled to push small missives of hope across a lake in Oakland.

Does Howie Muir expect anyone to take him seriously when he says (Forum, Sept. 6) that he not only wanted to scale down the proposed apartment building on San Pablo Ave., but also wanted it to be “as high as 100 percent” affordable housing? Scaling down the building would make it less feasible economically, and requiring that much affordable housing would make it totally infeasible economically.

Maybe Muir should have used the same tactic in the height initiative. The initiative is such a drastic “down-zoning” that virtually no housing would be built if it passes. He could have added a provision to the initiative requiring developers to make 100 percent of their units affordable – which would guarantee that absolutely no housing would be built.

In his suit against the city, Muir is using the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) against the environment. By working against smart growth in Berkeley, he is working for worse sprawl, worse auto dependency, worse air pollution and worse global warming.

The only goal of Sunday’s Cal-Texas A&M women’s soccer game came off of an Aggie foot, but the Bears got the 1-0 victory at Edwards Stadium.

Texas A&M defender Shannon Labhart scored an own goal in the 50th minute to give Cal a split of the weekend’s games against top-10 teams. The Bears fell to Texas, 2-1, on Friday.

Labhart’s flub was a result of a nicely placed pass by Cal’s Kassie Doubrava and some high-speed pressure by freshman forward Tracy Hamm, who was racing Labhart for the ball. As A&M goalkeeper Kati Jo Spisak came out to challenge, Labhart dove to try and divert the ball. She succeeded, but only in sliding the ball into her own net.

“One more step and I would have put the ball in the net, but she kicked it in for me,” Hamm said. “She was so close to the goal, she didn’t have an angle to get it away.”

Although the Aggies outshot the Bears 10-6, the home team had better offensive chances, especially in the second half. Hamm had two opportunities to score goals of her own after the own goal but mishit both shots past open nets. Freshman Dania Cabello also had a good shot in front of the net but put it over.

“If you look at the shots, it looks like (the Aggies) were better,” Cal head coach Kevin Boyd said. “But we had good chances, including two sitters that we missed entirely.”

Gaining a split with No. 10 Texas and No. 3 Texas A&M was a decent result for the 11th-ranked Bears, especially since they were missing top scorer Laura Schott, who is out with a knee injury. Schott may be available for next weekend’s games against Santa Clara and St. Mary’s.

Boyd chose to start junior Sani Post in goal rather than freshman Ashley Sulprizio, who had started the Bears’ first three games. Post, a transfer from Notre Dame, is less athletic than Sulprizio but has better field presence and is more vocal than the younger player. Post didn’t have to make any difficult saves, but she came out strong on some through balls and kept the defense in order.

“Sani is outstanding in her communication and organization, and we decided to go with the experience today,” Boyd said. “We wanted to have an organized back line and not give up any one-on-ones, and we did that.”

Boyd wanted the Texas schools to give his team a serious test early in the season, and he felt his players came through despite the absence of Schott. the Bears have made four straight postseason tournaments but have lost in the opening round each time.

“I felt like last weekend were teams we had to beat to get into the playoffs,” he said. “But if we do get into the playoffs, it’s this type of team we’ll have to beat once we’re there.”

The Bears close out a five-game homestand with a match against No. 14 Santa Clara on Friday. The match will kick off at 4:30 p.m. at Edwards Stadium. Cal then travels to St. Mary’s on Sunday for a noon kickoff.

“Watersheds are the mainstream drainage patterns and define the contour of our hills and water,” said event director Mark Baldridge. “In addition to defining plant life and animal life, it defines our cultural life.”

But as organizers reflected on how far efforts to protect watersheds have come, they acknowledged that environmental challenges lay ahead.

“Technology has made people less aware of the physical world in which they’re living,” said Robert Hass, UC Berkeley professor and former U.S. Poet Laureate who founded the festival in 1996.

Upstream of Civic Center Park, above the route of Strawberry Creek – which was diverted for the sake of road construction – folks waiting for the bus on Shattuck Avenue wondered what a watershed was.

Further upstream on the UC Berkeley campus, where Strawberry Creek flows above ground before dipping beneath the downtown, yellow signs warn of a sewage spill contaminating the waterway.

Saturday’s festival aimed to educate people about the sensitivity of watersheds and advocate for their protection. Local environmental organizations, their booths ringing the park, worked hard all day to find new recruits.

Watershed as an idea, as a place is much better understood than it was in 1995,” said Pamela Michael, who founded River of Words along with Hass eight years ago. Events like the festival represented “sort of a stealth approach to watershed protection,” she said.

“People take care of what they love and know,” Michael explained.

The festival began with a three-block tour of Strawberry Creek as it flows under the concrete of the city’s downtown, its path marked by a blue line placed by creek restoration advocates.

The advocates are working to “daylight” the creek – or remove the concrete and restore it to its natural state. Similar efforts created what is now Strawberry Creek Park where culverts once buried the running water.

“There’s such a momentum behind creek daylighting and protection and restoration,” said Juliet Lamont, an environmental consultant who fielded questions behind the Urban Creeks Council table Saturday. “It’s the type of momentum you don’t want to ignore.”

Lamont said she was disappointed that Berkeley’s City Council this summer opted to leave an initiative proposing fees for education on storm water runoff off the November ballot.

She said the small tax would have funded a lot of environmentally beneficial programs – programs that might have prevented the pollution in Strawberry Creek.

UC Environmental Specialist Steve Maranzana said backed up pipes caused sewage to spill into Strawberry Creek on the UC campus during the Labor Day weekend.

“This is an urban watershed. It’s very different from a natural creek with all this development,” Maranzana said. “It’s really a challenge to keep an urban creek running clean.”

Among the pollutants fouling the water on a semi-regular basis are automotive fluids leaking out of cars, lawn fertilizers and pesticides and solvents and soaps people use to wash their cars, he said.

“If you go out to see the creek during the first rainstorm, you’ll see it soapy from all these cleaners,” Maranzana added.

Pundits like William Safire and White House insiders like Vice President Cheney are setting the stage for a preemptive strike on Iraq, against the advice of key military leaders and the State Department. Without strong support from our allies, without a clear end game and with tensions running high around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, events in the region could easily spin out of control.

Why isn't President George W. Bush listening to the people in his administration who have real military experience and depth in international affairs like his joint chiefs of staff and Secretary of State Colin Powell?

In Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance provided the nuts and bolts of the offensive, but in Iraq no equivalent indigenous force exists, meaning Americans would suffer much heavier casualties. What's more, the loss of life might be in vain, since there is no viable successor for Saddam waiting in the wings. In short, the joint chiefs of staff think a war against Iraq is an all-around bad idea. Bush should listen to his generals, and do his homework, when deciding how to deal with Saddam Hussein in the coming months.

Furthermore, the United Nations inspectors’ probably can do the job that needs to be done: Inspect any war weapons manufacturing sites, real or suspected. If Saddam is the target, then go one-to-one with him using special forces, the UN or President Bush himself. The notion that United States military forces should mount an aggressive assault on Iraq is totally irresponsible and reprehensible.

Callahan, who replaced Jon Gruden after he left for Tampa Bay, saw Rich Gannon and Charlie Garner lead the Raiders to a 31-17 victory over the Seattle Seahawks.

Gannon completed 19 of 28 passes for 214 yards and two touchdowns while Garner amassed 187 total yards and scored two touchdowns.

The Raiders tallied 24 straight points to beat the Seahawks for the fifth straight time in the Coliseum since 1997.

Because NFL realignment has separated the longtime AFC West rivals, Seattle is not slated to return to Oakland for a regular-season game until 2010. The Seahawks enter their first season in the NFC West this fall.

Sunday’s meeting was much like last year’s game here, except this time Seattle quarterback Matt Hasselbeck played well.

Hasselbeck, filling in for injured starter Trent Dilfer, completed his first eight passes and led the Seahawks into the end zone in their first offensive series with a 1-yard TD throw to Itula Mili.

As the starter last season, he was sacked six times before getting benched with the Seahawks trailing 38-0 in an eventual 38-14 loss.

In Seattle’s 1-3 preseason, Hasselbeck threw five interceptions and only one touchdown.

Rookie Maurice Morris set up Mili’s touchdown when he returned a kickoff 66 yards to start the Seahawks’ drive on the Oakland 36.

But then Seattle fell apart, struggling to convert third downs and allowing the Raiders touchdowns on their first three drives of the second quarter.

Perhaps this win was enough for the Raiders to rid themselves of their bad memories from their embarrassing loss in Seattle last season, when Shaun Alexander ran all over them.

Alexander’s name came up all week at the Raiders’ practice facility. He ran for 266 yards and three touchdowns, including an 88-yarder, as the Seahawks won 34-27 last November.

Oakland’s new defensive front led by John Parrella and Sam Adams made sure to shut down Alexander. He was limited to 36 yards on 13 carries, but he added an 11-yard touchdown reception in the final minutes.

Garner was the running back of the day. He carried 15 times for 123 yards and had five catches for 64.

Gannon, who did not throw a touchdown pass the entire preseason, hit Tim Brown for an 8-yard TD pass on Oakland’s opening possession.

Backup Raiders running back Zack Crockett was carted off the field late in the first quarter after injuring his neck while covering a punt. He was able to move his arms and legs but was taken to a local hospital for tests.

CAMP DAVID, Md. – President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Saturday the world must act against Saddam Hussein, arguing that the Iraqi leader has defied the United Nations and reneged on promises to destroy weapons of mass destruction.

“We owe it to future generations to deal with this problem,” Bush said as he greeted Blair at Camp David for a hasty brainstorming session on Iraq.

“The policy of inaction is not a policy we can responsibly subscribe to,” Blair said as he joined Bush in trying to rally reluctant allies to deal with Saddam, perhaps by military force.

“A lot of people understand that this man has defied every U.N. resolution. Sixteen U.N. resolutions he’s ignored,” Bush said.

The meeting came five days before Bush addresses the United Nations. The president is expected to challenge the international community to take quick, tough action to disarm Saddam, saying that without allied help the United States will be obligated to act on its own to remove Saddam, according to advisers involved in writing the speech.

Bush will tell the U.N. there is no time to waste; one early draft refers to Iraq as a “ticking time bomb.”

Senior Bush advisers acknowledge that Bush is setting the stage for a confrontation with Saddam, with the U.N. speech a last-ditch attempt to build an international coalition. The president assumes the showdown eventually will lead to military action, aides said. Key allies – including France, Germany and Russia – oppose the use of force against Iraq.

Bush said U.N. weapons inspectors, before they were denied access to Iraq in 1998, concluded that Saddam was “six months away from developing a weapon.” He also cited satellite photos released by a U.N. agency Friday that show unexplained construction at Iraq sites that weapons inspectors once visited to search for evidence Saddam was trying to develop nuclear arms.

“I don’t know what more evidence we need,” Bush said.

Still, more information will be presented as the president continues his effort to rally support at home and overseas for his views on Saddam, a senior White House official said Saturday. The official stressed the administration’s view that Saddam’s weapons capabilities have been consistently underestimated in the past.

After less than four hours of one-on-one talks, as well as larger discussions and dinner at the compound’s Laurel Cabin – which included Vice President Dick Cheney – Bush walked Blair on a wooded path back to his helicopter and the British premier headed off for London.

The session was an excellent one that focused on “the importance of rallying the international community” behind dealing with the threat Saddam poses, said Bush spokesman Sean McCormack.

The California men’s soccer team (1-2-1) took their second loss of the season this afternoon against #7 (Soccertimes) Southern Methodist (2-1-1) at Edwards Stadium.

SMU’s Diego Walsh scored the only goal needed in the game less than two minutes into the second half off of an assist by Duke Hashimoto. The 10-yard shot fired into the left corner of the box, out of reach for senior Bear goalie Josh Saunders. Saunders recorded four saves for the day, to SMU’s keeper, T.J. Tomasso’s five.

Cal was out shot in the match, nine to the Mustangs 14, yet both teams managed to get off five shots on goal in the effort.

Cal field hockey shuts out Indiana

The California field hockey team (4-1) celebrated their third victory of the season Sunday afternoon in Bloomington, IN as they beat Indiana (1-3) 1-0.

Cal got the on the board at the 57:51 mark. Hoosier goalkeeper Molly Pulkrabek came out to stop Cal’s Stephanie Lyons, but Lyons dished it off to senior Michelle Wald. Wald took advantage of the empty net and lifted it high into the back of the cage. The goal was Wald’s second of the year.

The Hoosiers would not go down without a fight though and had numerous opportunities in the final minutes of the game, but could not capitalize.

The Hoosiers got a penalty corner at the 63-minute mark. Sophomore Ryan Woolsey made the stick-stop, and sophomore Kayla Bashore took the ball and moved right. Her shot was on goal, but Cal’s Kelly Knapp came up with one of her eight saves as she dove to push the ball out.

Wald led Cal in shots as she took five of Cal’s 12 on the afternoon. Others collecting shots include juniors Nora Feddersen (4) and Erin Booth (1) and freshmen Kiely Schmidt (1) and Alana Smith (1).

The first half was one mark by missed opportunity for both squads. Both Knapp and Pulkrabek came up big in goal. Knapp denied five Hoosier shots, while Pulkrabek was able to knock away three Golden Bear shots.

SAN FRANCISCO – Californians say a lot of good and bad changes have occurred in the United States since Sept. 11, and many believe more terrorist attacks are imminent with California as a likely target, according to a Field Poll released Sunday.

Ninety percent of the voters surveyed said last year’s terrorist attacks made Americans more patriotic, while 82 percent said the country also is more fearful.

Other positives included Americans becoming more united, more determined, more family-oriented and more secure. The negatives included the country being less tolerant, more belligerent in its foreign policy, less optimistic and less democratic.

Eighty-three percent of those questioned this September said they believe more attacks are likely to occur somewhere in the United States. Of those asked whether they believe California is a likely target, 66 percent said they believe it is.

Californians surveyed said positive work has been done to help the country’s security in some areas, while improvements are still needed elsewhere.

One of Cal head coach Jeff Tedford’s main points of emphasis has been positive reinforcement for his players. He put that into practice twice on Saturday when wide receivers LaShaun Ward and Geoff McArthur committed drops.

Ward dropped a wide-open third-down pass in the third quarter, and Tedford called the same play on fourth down, with Ward catching the second chance for a first down. For Ward, who has been knocked for having shaky hands in the past, the immediate show of faith was important.

“I believe in coach Tedford and his system, and he believes in us,” Ward said. “There was no doubt in my mind that I’d catch the next one.”

Tedford knows Ward is his best deep threat and any loss of confidence could be devastating to a player who only became a receiver midway through last season after playing cornerback.

“I had no problem going right back to LaShaun,” Tedford said. “We know he’ll make the play, and the coverage just happened to have us throwing the ball to him again.”

McArthur dropped a long post pattern in the middle of the field in the second quarter. On the next play McArthur hit New Mexico State defensive end Tommy Laborin so hard on a crackback block that the 318-pound lineman had to be helped from the field.

“That was probably the best thing (the coaches) could have done, call a play that was designed to let me get a crackback,” McArthur said. “I’m not comfortable with dropping the ball, I was more aggressive from that point on.”

McArthur said the fact that Tedford continues to give players chances to make plays after mistakes forces them to keep their focus on the game, not on their errors.

“It just shows that coach Tedford has a real good grip on what he’s doing,” he said. “He knows how to deal with players. He treats us like men, not like kids. Every team has something go wrong during a game. It’s about what you do after that.”

OAKLAND — The police department and the FBI have asked a judge to set aside the $4.4 million a jury awarded to two Earth First activists earlier this year.

Activists Darryl Cherney and the late Judi Bari sued the police department and the FBI saying their civil rights were violated in the investigation of a 1990 bombing that injured them both.

Police arrested the two hours after the blast. Investigators said they were carrying the bomb for an act of environmental sabotage, but the case fell apart weeks later when prosecutors said there wasn’t sufficient evidence to bring charges.

In papers filed in U.S. District Court on Friday, the Oakland Police Department said three of the officers involved deserve new trials. They said the previous trial relied on improperly admitted evidence and testimony, and the plaintiffs’ attorneys committed misconduct.

The FBI also filed papers Friday making similar claims for three of its agents.

In June, a jury awarded Cherney and Bari’s estate compensatory and punitive damages. Police and FBI officials said the award amounts were inappropriate.

Last month, the U.S District Court confirmed the June ruling which opened the door for last week’s appeals. The court is expected to weigh in on the appeals sometime in November.

OAKLAND – Two burglary suspects were arrested Saturday evening in Oakland after a car chase that began in Marin County.

The pursuit began when Twin Cities police attempted to stop the men's vehicle on East Sir Francis Drake Boulevard at about 7:20 p.m. The men were wanted in connection with the burglary of a Marshalls department store in Corte Madera.

The chase reached speeds of 100 mph and covered about 20 miles. The suspects stopped on the 1000 block of Seventh Street in Oakland and fled on foot. The driver and one passenger were stopped after a short foot chase.

Police arrested two Oakland men: 23-year-old Joshua James Richardson Jr. and 27-year-old Damian Grayson Britt. A third suspect was not found.

Richardson and Britt were booked into the Marin County Jail on several charges including suspicion of burglary and possession of stolen property.

Tobacco lobbyists pleased

Tobacco lobbyists are proclaiming victory after the state Senate voted down a $2.13-per-pack cigarette tax increase in the recently passed state budget.

“The proposed tax would have hurt people that are least able to pay it,” said John Singleton, the director of public affairs for R.J. Reynolds, who said the median income of Californian smokers is only $26,500.

“It's picking on an unpopular minority to pay a disproportionate share of taxes,” he said.

A 50-cent cigarette tax increase was first proposed by Gov. Gray Davis in his budget revision in May and then the state Senate upped it to a 63-cent tax, according to Krik Kleinschmidt of the American Heart Association.

Assembly speaker Herb Wesson, D-Los Angeles, then proposed a $2.13-per-pack cigarette tax as a way to make up a budget shortfall, but the measure fell four votes short when Republicans stuck to a no-new-taxes pledge, Kleinschmidt said.

SAN FRANCISCO – A unanimous jury has handed Genentech Inc. a complete win in its $1 billion patent fight with San Francisco Bay area rival Chiron Corp.

After nearly two days of deliberations, a federal jury of 10 people on Friday said Chiron of Emeryville has no claim to any profits from Genentech’s blockbuster breast cancer drug, Herceptin.

Chiron unsuccessfully claimed it was entitled to as much as 30 percent of Herceptin’s sales because Genentech illegally used technology patented by Chiron to develop the drug.

After a 16-day trial, the jury found the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office improperly granted Chiron its patent to some genetically engineered antibodies, the cancer-fighting proteins that scientists turned into Herceptin.

Using a process it patented in 1997, Genentech produces the antibody by splicing a human gene into Chinese hamster ovary cells, which it brews in giant batches in “bioreactors.” Genentech also received a patent on the antibody itself.

Through a series of filters and chemical reactions, the human antibodies created in the hamster cells are sucked out, purified and turned into Herceptin as well as two other protein-based therapies.

In the mid-1980s, scientists at several different labs were racing to find, patent and produce cancer-fighting antibodies in mass quantities.

Cetus Corp., a small biotech company acquired by Chiron in 1991, filed the first of a long series of Herceptin-related monoclonal antibody applications in 1984. But Genentech was granted the first patent.

While Genentech was first to receive patents to technology key to Herceptin’s development, Chiron successfully argued that it applied for the patents first, which would give it a claim to some of the drug’s profits. U.S. District Court Judge William Shubb of Sacramento agreed with Chiron and put the burden on Genentech to prove the patent office made a mistake — an argument it successfully made.

“Chiron continues to believe that its patent covering the anti-HER-2 monoclonal antibodies is valid,” Chiron spokesman John Gallagher said. “The evidence clearly showed that Chiron was the first to invent these antibodies. Chiron intends to pursue multiple courses of action to overturn the verdict, including an appeal should that be necessary.”

Gallagher added that Friday’s verdict still won’t end the patent battles between the two biotechnology titans.

The patent office in August agreed to independently review Chiron’s infringement claim. Chiron also filed another lawsuit in March alleging that Herceptin violates yet another one of its patents. That case is scheduled to go to trial next year.

Last year, Genentech sold a record $347 million worth of the drug, which has racked up nearly $1 billion in sales since the Food and Drug Administration approved Herceptin in late 1998.

Genentech is appealing an unrelated $500 million verdict in Los Angeles involving the City of Hope Medical Center, which said the company refused to share profits of drugs developed with help from the hospital.

Known as one of the Bay Area's biggest and best block parties, Sunday’s Solano Stroll is expected to draw 150,000 strollers to Albany for a day of food, fun and wholehearted fulfillment.

The event comes just three days before the one-year anniversary of the attacks on Sept. 11 – a once inconspicuous date marked by the end of lazy summer.

Event organizer Lisa Bullwinkel said that Sunday’s Solano Stroll will open itself up to the tragic day.

This year’s theme – the making of origami cranes, a Japanese tradition of sending wishes for peace – was inspired by a Sept. 11 memorial that Bullwinkel came across during a trip to New York’s Ground Zero last Christmas.

Bullwinkel was impressed by the colorful peace cranes attached to the memorial fence around the site. She immediately thought of bringing the concept home.

“They're a perfect symbol and graphically beautiful,” she said. “Our idea is that everyone at the stroll will be decorating with the cranes – crane puppets, hats, booths, clothes.”

Origami cranes as a form of calming began in Hiroshima, Japan, when a child injured from nuclear radiation made 1,000 origami paper birds with a wish that they would bring healing and peace.

Alison Tully, with the Beacon School in Oakland, said local students have been working diligently to prepare birds for the festival.

“They love origami, they could make them forever,” she said. “There's no cutting, pasting or drawing and you end up with a functional dimensional object,” Tully said.

“It's a positive way to approach past events and give thanks to people who acted heroically, so to not dwell on the sadness, but on the positive,” she added.

There will be three grand marshals at this year’s Solano Stroll parade, including former Berkeley police Chief Dash Butler, who retired this summer after 28 years of service.

Berkeley firefighter Darren Brobosky and his German Shepard rescue-dog Dylan are the other two leaders. Both Brobosky and Dylan served at Ground Zero.

The trio will ride an antique fire engine at the parade’s kick-off at 11 a.m. at the intersection of Colusa and Solano avenues.

The day begins at 8 a.m. with the traditional pancake breakfast at Veterans’ Memorial Park. Stroll booths open at 10 a.m. Madame Ovary uses egg puppets, puns and performances in a show for all ages which she calls, “an all day grazing thing, a movable feast.”

Free shuttles are scheduled to run from the North Berkeley BART station and along the parallel Marin Avenue.

I am dismayed by the increasingly familiar claim that Berkeley is “already too dense.” The fact is that while the rest of the Bay Area was exploding with growth over the past decades Berkeley actually lost population. The U.S. Census clearly shows a drop of 8,000 people since 1970.

There are many, many people who work here and would like to live here (teachers, store clerks, office workers, librarians) but cannot afford to. Would-be residents are forced to be commuters, driving through our streets and our neighborhoods in high volumes, looking for parking spaces, increasing noise and air pollution, compromising our safety. We have lost population but gained cars and traffic.

Berkeley used to be a place where artists, musicians, and writers could find a place to live. No longer. Children born and raised here cannot afford to live as adults in their hometown.

It should be possible for people to live near their work, for Berkeley’s artists to continue to be residents, for our seniors and the next generation to live in their hometown. If indeed as a city we want all of that, and I believe we do, we need to be purposeful about creating safe, attractive, affordable housing. While we are too dense in traffic, we are not too dense in affordable housing. If anything, we are under-dense in the kind of housing that will keep Berkeley the city we want it to be.

Several measures on the November ballot will determine whether Berkeley will circle the wagons around itself or welcome as residents those who have been forced to become commuters. Measure P, the so-called “height initiative,” would cripple our ability to create new affordable housing on our major streets (San Pablo, University, Telegraph), the only places where affordable housing is a realistic possibility. In the electoral debate over Measure P you will hear over and over that Berkeley is “already too dense” as if it were a fact. The U.S. Census clearly shows that Berkeley has lost thousands in population over the last few decades. The “too dense” argument was created to alarm us and distract us from the main point, which is Berkeley’s profound imbalance between jobs and housing that is affordable to the people who hold those jobs. The kind of city we will be in the future depends upon our ability not to resist change but to imagine and create those changes that will mean a better city for all of us.

Without public transportation in the form of trains and streetcars the fast paced urban development of the Bay Area, 1863 to 1915, would not have been possible. The first railroad in the Bay Area opened in 1863 and ran from San Francisco to San Jose. The transcontinental railroad opened in 1869, and soon there were rail lines around the state. The railroads made development possible and created a network of towns and cities.

When the University of California opened its first campus in Berkeley in 1873, the only way to reach the campus by public transportation from Oakland was by a horse-drawn trolley and is reported to have taken about 1 1/2 hours. However, only three years later a steam train began operating on a spur line from Oakland to Berkeley Station at Shattuck Avenue and Center Street. Horse drawn trolleys continued to make the shorter runs.

After electric streetcars began operating in Berkeley in 1891, property near the new and convenient streetcar lines was quickly subdivided. The earliest lines ran along Grove Street (now Martin Luther King, Jr. Way) and Shattuck Avenue. In 1892 an electric streetcar line was running along Telegraph Avenue. By 1912 there were so many train and electric streetcar lines crisscrossing Berkeley that no one was more than three blocks from some sort of public transportation.

The AC Transit System that today operates in Alameda and Contra Costa counties is the legacy of the Key System (originally called the Oakland Transit Company.) Starting in 1893 the wealthy Death Valley borax miner, Francis Marion “Borax” Smith (famous for his “20 Mule Team” borax products), began acquiring railroad and streetcar companies in Alameda County. By 1903 he had unified and modernized these companies and then expanded them into a coordinated transit system that eventually included ferries. Smith had laid the foundation for today's transit system.

When the Key System streetcars began running on College Avenue in 1903, the farmland along the route was subdivided for housing and small commercial districts. Although busses replaced electric streetcars in north Berkeley as early as 1941, the streetcars on College Avenue were not removed until 1947.

In 1946 after many of the electric streetcar and rail systems had been abandoned, the Bay Area Electric Railroad Association was formed to preserve and interpret the history of electric railroad equipment. The association maintains the Western Railway Museum and Archive Center at Rio Vista Junction in Solano County (www.wrm.org) where a visitor can not only see historic electric streetcars but can actually take a ride on them.

Susan Cerny is author of Berkeley Landmarks and writes this in conjunction with the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association.

Gina Rose Halpern’s paintings are colorful, often exuberant works that incorporate references to many spiritual traditions, from Christianity to Buddhism to the nature religions of the world’s indigenous people. For Halpern, her work is not simply decorative or expressive but a form of healing. The 51-year-old El Cerrito artist has a career as vibrant and colorful as her paintings. She is an interfaith minister, teacher, and therapist who believes in the literal healing power of art.

The spiritual dimension in Halpern’s art goes back to her youth. In 1976, at the age of 25, she was well on her way as an accomplished visual artist with a degree from the Rhode Island School of Design when her career came to an abrupt halt. She was diagnosed with a life-threatening illness.

During that time of terror and confusion, she underwent a near-death experience and had the first of what she came to call her “transformational” dreams. The joyous figure of a child appeared to her, laughing and dancing.

Halpern set about capturing the dream on canvas. It was the beginning of a spiritual journey for her, and of a career dedicated to art as a healing medium. “My dream life has informed everything I do,” she explains. “The intention of all my work is healing.”

Some viewers may detect echoes of Frida Kahlo, the Mexican artist who depicted her physical and mental sufferings with images of bodies riven by thorns, or opening up to expose internal organs. Halpern’s “Animal Allies” shows the figure of a kneeling woman whose body seems cleaved by jagged lines. In fact, Halpern’s work comes out of her own experiences with illness and death. But Halpern’s paintings are not driven by psychological anguish. They reflect a more optimistic, spiritual approach that embraces life and death, suffering and joy. The figure in “Animal Allies” has a nerve line that runs up her spine and out her hand, where flowers bloom from her fingertips. She is attended by the ministering figures of an owl, a coyote, and a rabbit.

A non-practicing Jew, Halpern began her spiritual quest by “reading the Bible from page one all the way through,” eventually being baptized as a Catholic. In time, she migrated to the Episcopal Church and was ordained as a minister. Later she expanded her studies to all the world’s religions. Today, she is the director of the Chaplaincy Institute, an interfaith seminary based in Fairfax in Marin County that encourages people to integrate their religious beliefs and their work.

Along the way, Halpern worked with hospitals and health care facilities, creating art for cancer patients and teaching art to the sick. She traveled and taught in India and toured Russian pediatric hospitals with maverick doctor Patch Adams. A series of mandala paintings she created in 1987 is still used for meditation and healing at the Commonweal Center, a facility that offers alternative treatments for cancer patients.

The Chaplaincy Institute, which Halpern co-founder with two other ministers in 1998, is the culmination of her mission to integrate the healing arts and spirituality. Halpern’s dreams take substance as art; for others, she says, the call may be to political or social action. It’s not just individuals who need healing, Halpern observes; it’s the world.

With the anniversary of Sept. 11 looming, Halpern says, she feels her work to be increasingly important. Lately her dreams have been of “healing the world through beauty.”

“In our culture people often look at art as decoration,” she says. “I’m going back to the original purpose of art as spiritual service.”

Halpern’s work serves as the backdrop next Wednesday for a Sept. 11 commemoration at Seventh Heaven, featuring meditation and yoga. On Sept. 13, poet Tamam Kahn will read from her collection “Al Kishaf: The Unveiling.” On Sept. 22, the gallery hosts an equinox celebration and fund-raising reception for the Chaplaincy Institute, featuring music and dance. All events are open to the public by reservation.

Navigate your way through legal issues when living with cancer or any serious illness. Panel presentation on employment, insurance and public benefits and one-on-one sessions with attorneys. Please, pre-register.

A depleted Cal women’s soccer team fell to 10th-ranked Texas, 2-1, Friday afternoon at Edwards Stadium. The Texas win avenged a 2-1 loss to Cal in Austin last year.

The Golden Bears played their second straight game without All-American forward Laura Schott and Kim Stocklmeir, arguably the best defender on the Cal team. The latter is out with a broken collarbone sustained in the season-opening win over Ohio State. Schott missed the Texas game and will likely miss the Texas A&M game on Sunday due to a sprained MCL in her right knee, which she suffered Wednesday in practice.

Against the Longhorns, Cal started freshman Sierra Garthwaite in place of Stocklmeir and freshman Tracy Hamm, Cal’s leading scorer this year with two goals, in place of Schott.

But the game’s brightest star was Texas forward Kelly Wilson, who scored twice. The first goal came in the 53rd minute when Texas defender Laura Kram launched a free kick from near midfield into the Cal penalty area. The ball glanced off of a Golden Bear defender and fell at the feet of Wilson, who scored past Cal goalkeeper Ashley Sulprizio.

Wilson scored her second in the 75th minute, running onto a long pass as Cal defender Lucy Brining challenged her. Wilson shed Brining and slid the ball past an onrushing Sulprizio to make the score 2-0.

While Cal was unlucky to lose its big-time goalscorer for yet another game, Texas was glad to have Wilson back. The young All-American missed the Longhorns’ wins over New Mexico and Duke last week because she was helping the U.S. under-19 national team win the U-19 World Championship in Canada.

“We’re so happy to have Kelly back,” Texas coach Chris Petrucelli said. “She saved us. We didn’t play very well. We were fortunate to win. But when you have a great player like that, she gets two chances and she scores two goals.”

Cal pulled a goal back in the 86th minute, when a handball in the Texas penalty area led to a Bears penalty kick. Midfielder Carly Fuller easily converted the PK to cut the lead in half, but Cal soon ran out of time.

The absence of Schott was glaring, as Cal outshot Texas, 10-5, with seven shots on goal. But the only shot the Bears could finish was the penalty kick.

Texas goalkeeper Alex Gagarin made five saves, though none were that difficult.

“We didn’t put any away that we needed to put away,” Cal coach Kevin Boyd said. “We just didn’t put any good chances on goal. Most of our strikes went right at the keeper, so that she didn’t even have to move. She just had to hold the ball.”

Boyd said he isn’t sure if Schott will be available for next weekend’s games against Santa Clara and at St. Mary’s. Schott, who needs just six goals and 24 points to become Cal’s all-time goalscorer and scorer, respectively, has played just 70 minutes this season. All those minutes came against Ohio State, against whom she also received a red card. The ensuing one-game suspension kept her out of the last Sunday’s win over Purdue.

Stocklmeir’s return date is also unclear. She will miss at least six weeks and may return sometime in October. If the senior can’t return this year, she may redshirt and come back next season as a fifth-year senior.

“If I’m strong and able to come back and know that I can contribute to the team in the NCAA tournament this year, then I’ll definitely do it,” Stocklmeir said. “If not, if I need to take some time, then I’ll definitely wait till next year.”

“Either way, Stock out, Laura out, I think we outplayed them,” Boyd said. “It got ugly for a while there, but it had to. We were down 2-0 and we had to catch the game. We had to just launch numbers forward. It’s early in the season. If we can correct those little mistakes, we’ll be okay down the line.”

The Bears face No. 3 Texas A&M on Sunday at Edwards Stadium. The game will follow the men’s match, which will start at 1 p.m.

Michael Israel had been living in subsidized housing at 1040 University Ave. for only a week when fire swept through his building and put him out of a home. Like many of the 69 residents who were ousted by the Aug. 26 blaze at UA Homes, Israel had been a drifter, living in the streets of the East Bay, before rooting himself with the help of social service workers in the now scorched west Berkeley residential hotel.

“I was looking for a new and brighter future,” Israel said. He had started taking classes at Merritt College in Oakland and was trying to get his life together, he said. But progress was marred when the flames hit.

The residents were escorted without serious injury from the early morning blaze with only the clothes on their backs. They won’t be allowed to return to the partially-damaged complex for at least another five weeks. And now, in addition to personal problems the residents might be trying to deal with, many of them are again facing homelessness.

“It took a lot of work to find housing for a lot of these people in the first place, and we don’t want to lose them now,” said Drew King, an analyst with the city’s housing department.

The city is one of many groups working to find transitional housing for the fire victims.

After the victims spent two days living in a gymnasium at the James Kenney recreation center on Eighth Street, the American Red Cross moved in to assist, providing residents with private motel rooms in Berkeley and Oakland.

But with accommodation expenses costing about $30,000 a week, after Monday night the Red Cross cannot afford to pay for rooms.

“We still don’t have a plan for what’s going to happen Tuesday,” said Matt Rosenberg, relief operation director for the Red Cross. Finding a large facility, like the old Oakland army base, or cheaper rent-by-the-week motels, are housing options, but nothing has been secured, he said.

So the search continues.

Working to the benefit of the displaced residents is a section of the Berkeley Municipal Code known informally as the relocation ordinance. The uncommon city law puts the burden of finding housing on the landlord, in this case, Resources for Community Development (RCD).

RCD is “going above the call of duty” in their effort to find housing for the former tenants, according to one city official, but finding housing for 69 people is going to be difficult. The reason is cost.

RCD could not be reached for comment, but city officials said that insurance reimbursements for the fire were not coming through as RCD had hoped.

Though managed by RCD, the building is owned by UA Housing Inc., a nonprofit developer specializing in federally-subsidized housing.

City fire officials estimate that the blaze, which is thought to have been started accidentally when a pile of clothing caught fire, caused about $500,000 of damage to the building, mostly by water during the suppression effort.

All but eight of the building’s 74 units are expected to be repaired and made inhabitable next month.

This weekend, the displaced residents have moved into five west Berkeley hotels, down from nearly a dozen earlier this week and all much closer to home.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen next,” said former UA resident Carl Johnson in the lobby of the Ramada Inn on San Pablo Avenue. Johnson receives government subsidies for housing and to treat medical conditions and said that considering his circumstances Red Cross and city officials have made the last two weeks easy.

The same can not be said for displaced resident Pat Boushell.

Boushell is the third and lesser-known candidate in this year’s high-profile mayoral race in Berkeley. He says the fire has been a setback for his campaign.

“This is a real inconvenience, but we’ve been a grassroots effort all along and will be able to get over this,” he said.

Whenever I see an article in the Daily Planet signed by Will Youmans I can easily predict the nature of it, i.e. anti-Israel and anti-Semitic. Although he always interjects that “some of my best friends are Jewish,” probably the far-left self-hating Jews. Mr. Youmans has the same problem that the FBI has in labeling the killing of two innocents at the El Al desk at the Los Angeles airport. The FBI believe that the Egyptian Muslim who carried his weapon into the airport was bent upon a killing spree and his act was an act of terror. So Mr. Youmans, I believe it is safe to say that the incident at the Hillel was also an act of terror in the fact that it has unnerved the many Jewish students on campus. With your letters and the Moslem student groups haranguing Jewish students, it has made life very unpleasant and unacademic for them.

The Cal men’s soccer team got its first win of the season in dramatic fashion against Portland on Friday, tying the game with three minutes left in regulation before scoring a golden goal in overtime for a 2-1 victory.

The Bears’ goals, scored by sophomores Noah Merl and Mike Muñoz, respectively, were also their first two goals of the young season. Cal (1-1-1) was shut out in both games at the Loyola Marymount Tournament last weekend.

Merl’s goal came in the 87th minute. A Cal freekick deep in Portland (2-1-0) territory bounced around and was cleared to Merl at midfield. He juked past one defender and launched a shot from 25 yards out that deflected off of a Pilot foot and skimmed past goalkeeper Curtis Spiteri, who may have been shaken up after being kicked in the head by one of his teammates moments earlier.

Merl’s goal sent the game into overtime at 1-1, and the Bears ended the game in the first 10-minute extra period. Sophomore Calen Carr, a Berkeley native, took a ball on the left wing and hit a cross that Muñoz flicked into the side-netting. Muñoz raced behind the goal and ripped his jersey off in celebration, the first of the year for the Bears.

“That’s all we’ve been doing in practice, working on crosses,” Muñoz said. “Caleb put a great ball in, and I was lucky enough to go up and get it.”

Cal head coach Kevin Grimes said he wasn’t too worried about his team’s ability to score despite the two shutouts last weekend.

“Goals are streaky, they come and they go,” Grimes said. “We’ve traditionally started slowly, and the goals start to come later for us.”

Portland came into the game ranked No. 7 in the country, while the Bears dropped out of the rankings after the LMU Tournament. Although Cal is a young team (just two seniors and five juniors), the Bears felt a need to get back on track quickly.

“We try not to pay attention to the rankings,” Merl said. “But when it comes down to it, we killed our reputation last weekend. We had to come out strong this weekend and get a win, maybe two.”

The Bears face No. 22 Southern Methodist on Sunday. The game will kick off at 1 p.m. at Edwards Stadium.

With the ink still drying on the state’s 2002-2003 budget, Berkeley Unified School District officials say the impact on the local school system is far from clear.

“Everybody is asking that question,” said Board of Education President Shirley Issel. “I don’t think we’ll know for a while.”

But statewide observers said that local districts like Berkeley Unified will fare relatively well given that the budget includes a $3.3 billion spending hike over 2001-2002 levels, while funding in other areas, like health care and social services, declined significantly in the face of a $24 billion budget shortfall.

“There’s no question that education was the winner in a bad budget year,” said Kevin Gordon, executive director of the California Association of School Business Officials.

Still, there are some strings attached. Critics note that the $3.3 billion increase in public school spending is actually less than it appears because it includes $1.15 billion in education money borrowed from the 2001-2002 budget year.

Furthermore, Gov. Gray Davis made several education-related line item vetoes when he signed the budget Thursday. Adult education programs, which are administered by local districts like Berkeley Unified, took a $23 million hit and Davis cut $17 million from nonprofit Healthy Start, which funds academic and health support services.

Still, observers agree that public education fared well overall, with per pupil spending increasing 6.9 percent over last year from $6,610 to $7,067.

Assemblywoman Dion Aroner, D-Berkeley, said urban school districts like Berkeley Unified will fare even better in 2003-2004 when a new formula for “equalization” funding, aimed at ensuring equal funding from district to district across the state, goes into effect.

All of this talk about the BTV show “Unlimited Possibilities” fails to address the real issue here – it's dreadfully boring. I would bet the surveillance video tape at the DMV information counter would have more human interest than the monotonous drone of this show. That said, the Berkeley City Council is squandering an opportunity to inspire youth about true possibilities. I suggest the council assemble a group of youth to view the show, provide them with video cameras and see what happens. For any child that can sit through he show (without falling asleep) will surely come to the conclusion that they could do much better with an precious hour of public access cable. Who knows, the next young Antonio Fellini might be living right here in Berkeley – the possibilities are endless!

SAN FRANCISCO – As a judge framed it Friday, the lawsuit over who owns Barry Bonds’ record-setting 73rd home run ball boils down to simple definitions: “A catch is a catch – if it’s a catch.”

Judge James J. McBride’s musings matter because he will decide whether the case goes to trial, or whether one of the men with claims to the million-dollar memento should get it outright.

After an hour’s worth of arguments Friday, McBride didn’t rule who owns the ball: Alex Popov, the man who gloved it but lost it in a scrum, or Patrick Hayashi, the man who emerged from the tussling tangle with the big grin.

Though Hayashi initially took it home, the ball has since been placed under lock and key. The judge has 90 days to rule, but won’t likely take that long.

The case has reached a legal logjam since Oct. 7, when the San Francisco Giants’ slugger whacked the single-season record ball into the bleachers of Pacific Bell Park. Popov says Hayashi is trying to keep what’s not his while Hayashi insists he found the ball on the ground because Popov never caught it.

Popov’s lawyers asserted it’s indisputable he caught the ball – he had it in his glove and brought it to his chest, they said, before being consumed by what McBride called “a low-grade mosh pit” of fans.

Hayashi’s lawyers preferred the major league baseball definition of “catch,” which they said proves Popov neither possessed nor owned it.

Mayoral candidate Tom Bates and Councilmember Donna Spring were the big winners at Wednesday’s Berkeley Green Party nomination event. Both candidates won overwhelming support in preliminary votes and are now all but assured the official endorsements, to be named Sunday.

For Bates, who represented Berkeley in the state Assembly for 20 years, the support of Berkeley’s 5,000 registered greens is pivotal. His race against incumbent Mayor Shirley Dean is expected to be close, and Bates says having progressive factions behind him is necessary to win.

“I really do value you guys,” Bates told party members at a member’s home on 2000 block of Blake Street, adding that he would seek their counsel on policy issues if he were elected mayor.

Although other environmental organizations have endorsed Bates, he is considered a centrist by most progressives, and several greens worry that he is too conservative on issues such as the environment, development and human rights.

“I want a sense of how the city is going to be different other than nicer city council meetings,” said Laura Stevens, expressing concern that Bates’ positions weren’t much different than Dean’s.

But most greens voiced support for Bates. “Tom has done more since he returned from the Assembly than a lot of elected officials who are getting paid,” said Pam Webster.

Green party members faced an unprecedented choice in having two green candidates to choose from in the city’s 4th District race. Community activist L A Wood has challenged the party’s standard-bearer, Councilmember Donna Spring.

Party members had no difficulty deciding who to endorse as Spring won 16–2 in the preliminary vote.

“I’m deeply concerned about two greens running in the same district,” said Tom Kelly. “We’re putting ourselves in jeopardy.”

Bob Migdal, an attorney and former rent board commissioner, is supported by the council’s moderate faction and is expeted to mount a strong campaign. David Freeman a former Zoning Adjustment Board member is also running for the council seat.

Wood, though expecting the endorsement to go to Spring, wasn’t happy about the decision.

“The [green] power structure is in the hands of so few people and the county party is not working to overcome it,” he said.

Wood sparked controversy recently when he claimed green party leaders purposely excluded him from a meeting Aug. 26 to plan to give the endorsement to Spring. Spring supporters, though, maintain that the meeting was publicized and held in the public library for anybody to attend.

There was one surprise endorsement by the greens.

In the 8th District, Green Party member Carlos Estrada was shunned in favor of Peace and Justice Commissioner Anne Wagley.

According to party members, Estrada gave disappointing answers on a questionnaire provided to the candidates. He was was too concerned with UC Berkeley rather than with city issues, said Elliot Cohen. Wagley’s endorsement was made at an earlier meeting.

While the greens were united on nearly every issue, the height initiative drove a wedge through the party. The controversial initiative will appear on the November ballot and, if passed, would decrease allowable building heights in several neighborhoods.

Party members decided not to offer an official opinion on the initiative after a preliminary poll showed that six members supported height limits and seven opposed them.

Those against the initiative said limiting building heights would lead to more urban sprawl and more cars on the road. “We are becoming the laughing stock of the smart growth movement,” said Stuart Cohen.

Supporters said the initiative was the only way to stop developers from forcing out-of-scale development on a compliant City Council and planning staff.

Bob Marsh, Berkeley Green Party treasurer said he would probably vote for height limits, but understood the divide. “This is an emotional idea,” he said. “People are going to vote on what they think Berkeley should look like.”

With 5,000 members, Berkeley’s chapter of the Green Party constitutes 8 percent of the city’s registered voters. Donna Spring is the only party member in City Council, but greens are represented on the Rent Board and School Board.

LOS ANGELES — A Los Angeles County woman has tested positive for West Nile virus in what is believed to be the first case of a person contracting the illness in the western United States, health officials said Friday.

The results of further tests won’t be known for another week, but based on preliminary tests county health officials called it a probable case of locally acquired West Nile virus infection. The victims of four other confirmed cases in Oregon, Washington, Montana and Idaho contracted the virus in states east of the Rocky Mountains.

The diagnosis in Los Angeles surprised health officials because ongoing monitoring of chicken flocks, dead wild birds and mosquitoes had shown no trace of the virus in California.

“The virus’ arrival in California is anticipated, but unexpected at this time since it is not present in any contiguous states,” said Dr. Thomas Garthwaite, director and chief medical officer of the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services.

The unidentified woman had a mild case of meningitis, which is associated with the virus, in early August and later recovered.

She had not traveled outside the region for several months, county Department of Health Services spokeswoman Maria Iacobo said. Officials provided no further information about the woman, including her age or where in the county she lives.

Since West Nile was first detected in New York in 1999, the virus has been found in humans in 27 other states and the District of Columbia. While its push westward had been expected, until Friday there had been no confirmed cases of humans contracting the disease west of the Rocky Mountains.

Nationwide this year, there have been 854 confirmed human cases of the virus, including 43 deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In the four other western cases of confirmed West Nile virus, the victims are thought to have been infected in states where the mosquito-borne virus is already known to be present.

In Salem, Ore., a Grand Rapids, Mich., woman also tested positive for the virus Friday, although state officials said she didn’t contract the disease in Oregon.

“She did not acquire the infection here in Oregon. She came from a place where we know that the West Nile virus is circulating quite a bit,” state epidemiologist Mel Kohn said.

Earlier, a Washington man was diagnosed with the virus, which health officials said he contracted in Louisiana.

In Idaho, officials said a 47-year-old man had been diagnosed with the virus but said they believe he contracted the disease during a recent trip to the East Coast. The man did not need to be hospitalized and is recovering well, health officials said.

Montana state epidemiologist Todd Damrow said a 23-year-old Sweet Grass County women began showing symptoms of West Nile after returning to Montana from Ohio. He said the woman is doing fine and was not admitted to a hospital.

West Nile virus is closely related to St. Louis encephalitis, already present in California and other western states. It typically causes flulike illness or no symptoms at all in humans. In rare cases, it can lead to deadly inflammation of the brain. The young and the elderly are especially at risk.

Officials estimate there could be 110,000 to 150,000 people who have been infected in the United States, most of whom will never suffer its effects or know they have the virus.

Infected mosquitoes carry the West Nile virus in their saliva and pass it on when they bite. Several mosquito species act as vectors for the virus, and more than 110 North American bird species can serve as hosts, according to the CDC.

A dispute over a leaky roof has made finding authentic south-of-the border cuisine considerably more difficult for west Berkeley residents and has roused the mayor while forcing at least one single mother to lose her livelihood.

Berkeley police officers on Tuesday served Pepito’s Deli owners an eviction notice, and police and sheriff’s deputies escorted employees out. On Wednesday a barbed wire fence was erected around the deli at the corner of San Pablo Avenue and Allston Way.

The deli’s owner, Maria Magana who has a 17-year-old daughter, said she refused to pay rent in April after landlords Leo and Helena Chen, of San Francisco did not repay her the money she gave them for a new roof. Magana said the Chens asked her to pay for the $10,000 repair herself and promised to reimburse her with interest.

The Chen’s son, Nelson, would not comment on specifics of the case but said that Magana’s claims are “untrue, unrealistic and blown out of proportion.”

“I think she feels that she’s been victimized and it’s not true,” he said.

After Magana withheld the $3,300 monthly rent – $300 more than what she said is on her lease – the Chens filed a complaint with the Alameda Superior Court.

On Tuesday, a judge denied Magana a 30-day extension of her eviction.

Magana said she was “heartbroken.”

“I couldn’t believe our system wouldn’t protect small businesses that are providing jobs for people and helping the community,” she said.

Standing outside the closed business with her one-and-a-half year old daughter, local resident Leticia Maciel said she was stunned to find the business that she has frequented for 15 years closed.

“Now where can we go?” Maciel said, throwing her hands in the air. “It’s the only Mexican food here.”

Gordon Choyce of Jubilee Restoration, a nearby nonprofit organization, said the problems between Magana and the landlord had gotten so bad that Magana was seriously considering relocating her business. Magana had discussed with him the possibility of moving to a mixed-use site being built at 2700 San Pablo Ave.

Local residents lamented the loss of a neighborhood fixture. Long lines frequently greeted hungry patrons at lunchtime. The Latino community was particularly fond of the business because a portion of the eatery carried hard-to-find Mexican specialty groceries and magazines.

Berkeley Mayor Shirley Dean expressed sympathy. She said Magana was the victim of “bad legal advice” and emphasized that Magana is a single mother who often worked late at night to keep her business running smoothly.

Dean said she tried to stave off the eviction by making calls over the weekend to judges, attorneys and the landlords on Magana’s behalf. Unfortunately, Dean said, she was not able to reach an agreement that would save the business.

“It’s a crying shame,” she said. “This is the kind of minority-owned business we want to protect.”

Henk Boverhuis of Britalia, Ltd., a nearby auto shop, said that Magana was a popular business owner and “is greatly missed in the neighborhood.”

But the closure of the deli struck Boverhuis on a more personal level.

OAKLAND – Alameda County officials announced Thursday that the contractor working on the new critical care building at the Highland Hospital campus has been pulled off of the job.

County officials blame the Minneapolis-based contractor, M.A. Mortenson, for repeated problems with the five-story building's heating, ventilation and air-conditioning system.

The county notified the company of its intentions to find a new contractor for the job last week after several attempts to resolve problems with the system and numerous work delays. Mortenson was removed from the job late Wednesday.

The $68 million project is 14 months behind schedule.

“We took this action to ensure that the remaining work is done quickly and correctly,” said Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson. “We want to make sure this facility is available as soon as possible to the thousands of patients who seek care at Highland each year.”

Meanwhile, Mortenson has filed a breach of contract suit against the county, said senior vice president Paul Cossette. The lawsuit seeks $10 million the company said it is owed and additional unspecified damages.

Cossette disputed the county's claims Friday, insisting that the plans for the building's air system were flawed from the start.

“The allegations made by the county are completely unfounded,” Cossette said. “The problems with the HVAC system are clearly design-related.”

He said that work has continued on the hospital project even though the county hasn't paid Mortenson since March. He added that the county is dumping the contractor with the job “99.5 percent'' complete.

Cossette maintains the blame for delays in the job lies with the county.

“From virtually the first instant we showed up on the job site they started dumping changes on us,” Cossette said. “Virtually every drawing in the documents has been changed, some of the pages have been changed a dozen times.”

He said the fundamental problem is that the design calls for “pushing a huge amount of air through a duct system that isn't designed for it.”

Aki Nakao, director of the county's General Services Agency, denied that the system's design is faulty.

“As far as our opinion goes there is no design flaw,” he said.

“We believe that the design can work. It just needs to be properly installed.”

He said the company has been running behind schedule for some time and most recently missed a “self-declared” deadline of June 13.

Nakao said the project could still be completed by the end of the year although a news release issued by the county said the project would be completed in the spring.

SANTA CRUZ — Medical marijuana advocates outraged by a raid at a local prescription pot supplier protested at federal offices in several cities in Northern California and across the country Friday.

“Medical marijuana patients and advocates around the country realize what’s happening in California is absolute terror,” said Steph Sherer, executive director of Americans for Safe Access, who was heading to the Drug Enforcement Agency office in Oakland to protest.

DEA spokesman Richard Meyer in San Francisco said his agents simply were doing their job.

“Federal law says marijuana is illegal,” he said. “We have no choice. We’re enforcing the law.”

On Thursday, federal agents raided a small pot farm located on a quiet coastal road about 55 miles south of San Francisco, pulling up about 100 plants and arresting the owners — Valerie and Michael Corral.

The couple, leading activists for medical marijuana, were the latest high-profile advocates to be arrested in a series of sweeps during the past year in California.

State law in California, as well as Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Oregon and Washington, allows marijuana to be grown and distributed to people with a doctor’s prescription. Federal law, on the other hand, prohibits marijuana use under any circumstances.

California medical marijuana growers and distributors work closely with local law enforcement, and are quite open about their programs. In fact, the farm raided Thursday morning by DEA agents had been featured in national media, and the program is listed in the local telephone book.

But in recent months, federal agents — working strictly without local support — have been busting pot clubs and farms in Northern California.

News of the Santa Cruz raid spread quickly across the country

“This is an issue that faces all of us,” said Karen Heikkala, holding a “Arrest Pain, Not Patients and Caregivers” in front of the federal building in Austin, Texas.

“It’s a sad day in the United States when the federal government goes after the sick and dying in direct violation of states’ rights,” she said.

In Washington, D.C., 15 people protested in front of the Justice Department. In Northern California, protesters gathered at DEA offices in San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose.

“The only way to explain this is in a truly fanatical, inhumane ... spirit that this was carried out,” said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance.

Back at the Corrals’ farm, where users had been preparing their annual harvest, a sign “Love Grows Here” still stood but there were only a few large stems and leaves scattered on the ground.

Prosecutors said the Corrals, who helped write the provision in California’s Proposition 215 that allows patients and their caregivers to cultivate their own medicine, had not been charged by Friday morning. But their attorney said they could be indicted at any time.

This was not the first arrest for the Corrals.

Before state and local laws allowed their program, they were arrested in 1992 and 1993. In 1992, Valerie Corral was prosecuted, but was found innocent after being the first person in California to challenge marijuana laws by arguing it was medically necessary. When they were arrested again in 1993, local authorities decided not to prosecute.

Valerie Corral said Friday she was deeply pained by the raid.

“They cannot know how many people’s lives they are causing suffering in because, if they did, they would not do this,” she said.

SANTA ROSA — As the insurance industry tries to offset rising costs and poor investment returns, leading providers are raising rates and denying renewals to people who’ve filed claims.

Insurance companies are raising rates for California homeowners by 20 percent this year and next year rates could go up even more, The Press Democrat of Santa Rosa reported Friday.

“Virtually every major carrier has asked for some sort of increase,” said Nanci Kramer, deputy press secretary for the California Department of Insurance, told the newspaper. “It’s a very hard market for homeowners.”

In addition to raising rates, many insurance providers are refusing to renew policies for consumers who have filed more than one claim in a three- to five-year period, Kramer said.

“Most consumers have no idea what a claim can do to them,” Kramer said.

The rate increases and stricter renewal standards are stunning consumers and have started an onslaught of complaints to state regulators in California and nationwide.

There are multiple reasons for soaring rates and tightening underwriting standards, according to Robert Hartwig, chief economist at the Insurance Information Institute, a New York insurance industry research firm.

The industry has been hit by multimillion-dollar claims for catastrophic events and the cost of home construction and repairs has increased, Hartwig told the newspaper.

Also, U.S. housing stock is getting older and claims for mold damage cost insurers more than $1 billion last year. Ultimately, carriers had to pay more in claims and claim expenses than they made in premiums.

Insurers had been able to cover the shortfall with good investment returns, but the current economic downturn has made it harder for companies to make up the difference.

NEW YORK — The smoke hangs thick at Pete’s Tavern, swirling through the 138-year-old pub as the lunch-hour conversation turns to the mayor’s plan to ban smoking in thousands of bars and restaurants across the city.

“They did it in California, but everybody out there is a health nut,” said Phil Kraker, an accountant and a Pete’s regular. “They’re out jogging at four in the morning. Those people are crazy. This is New York.”

Depending on which smoker you ask, the proposal — which must still clear the City Council — is either a personal affront or an attack on the appeal of New York itself.

Bar patrons say they should have the option of savoring a cigarette with their cocktails, especially in a city that prides itself on its independence, not to mention its nightlife.

“New York is the capital of the world,” said Audrey Silk, founder of the smoker-rights group NYC CLASH. “The charm of New York is our differences. Now you want to create this bland, faceless city?”

Mayor Michael Bloomberg stirred up the controversy a week ago in calling for the ban. The former smoker said bars and restaurants have to protect their employees from harmful smoke, just as they do from toxins like asbestos.

New York already outlaws smoking in restaurants with more than 35 seats, but there is no restriction against smoking in bars or the bar area of any restaurant.

A ban would cover about 13,000 establishments and would be the most visible tobacco restriction since California issued a similar rule four years ago. About 400 communities nationwide have adopted smoking bans in restaurants, according to the American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation.

Anti-smoking groups have sided with Bloomberg, but proprietors of bars and restaurants worry his plan will chase business away with the smoke.

Gerard Meagher, who manages the Old Town Bar near Union Square, tells customers cell phones are not welcome because they disturb the friendly pub atmosphere. But he said a smoking ban would be a mistake.

“The do-gooders are winning out,” Meagher said. “This is people who never had a fun time trying to take all the fun out of life.”

The debate is as much about culture as health, smokers say.

“People just like a smoke with their drink,” said Buster Smith, the white-haired manager at Pete’s. “Now they’re going to have to go outside. What do they do in the rain and snow?”

They might seek refuge in private clubs, or “smokeasies” as one puffer described them to The New York Times. Private clubs would be exempt from the proposed ban.

Ingl Kehrens, a visitor from Amsterdam who was puffing a cigarette at Connelly’s bar, questioned the logic of a ban. “How come you sell cigarettes but you don’t let people smoke them?” he asked.

Bloomberg is trying to discourage tobacco sales, too. Earlier this year, the city hiked its cigarette tax by more than $1, sending the price of a pack to $7.50 in some places. The city says the increase cut cigarette sales nearly in half.

Legislation aimed at improving the quality of life in the nation’s largest city has been a steady staple since 1994, when Rudolph Giuliani became mayor. He waged war against sex shops, panhandlers, squeegee men and even jaywalkers. But even Giuliani didn’t take on smoking.

Under Bloomberg’s plan, smokers who break the law may be fined $10 to $100 or be jailed up to 30 days.

City health inspectors would be responsible for enforcing a ban. There are no specific penalties for proprietors or employees.

The New York State Restaurant Association said it was reserving judgment on the plan until surveying its members.

After California’s ban took effect, many proprietors complained of lost business. But supporters of the measure pointed out that tax figures have not reflected a significant drop in business, and polls showed a majority of patrons backed the ban.

The mayor contends the ban will save employees and customers at bars and restaurants from secondhand smoke. He said an eight-hour shift for a bartender or waitress can be like smoking half a pack of cigarettes.

Smith, who has paced the floors of Pete’s greeting customers for more than three decades, doesn’t buy it.

“I just had an examination,” he said, “and my lungs are clear as a bell.”

SAN FRANCISCO — As many as 76 million people — mostly children — could die from water-related diseases by 2020 if changes aren’t made worldwide in the way communities develop their water systems and policies, according to a California think tank.

If those projections are correct, the deaths would exceed the number of people expected to die from AIDS over the same span.

According to a report released Friday by the Oakland-based Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security, even if the world meets a United Nations Millennium Goal of halving, by 2015, the proportion of people who cannot reach or afford safe drinking water, between 34 million and 76 million people could still die in the next 18 years.

The diseases that the report says will afflict these people include cholera, malaria, dengue fever and dysentery. More people die of diarrheal diseases than other water-related diseases, and children are extremely vulnerable to them.

“All of these diseases are associated with our failure to provide clean water,” said Dr. Peter Gleick, director of the institute. “I think it’s terribly bleak, especially because we know what needs to be done to prevent these deaths. We’re doing some of it, but the efforts that are being made are not aggressive enough.”

The problem is many people, especially those in developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia, don’t have access to clean water or basic sanitation, Gleick said.

While most of the deaths are projected to occur in developing nations, Joan Rose, professor of water microbiology at the University of South Florida, said every country is vulnerable. She pointed to a recent outbreak of E. coli in Canada that came from a contaminated well and killed some people.

“We look at our political agreements like NAFTA, and they’ve been economically beneficial to South America because we have allowed them to export their vegetables to the United States,” she said. “But none of that finance has been reinvested in sanitation, and in fact, we may be getting vegetables — we already have — that bring diseases into the United States.”

Protection of the water supply is a global and environmental issue, as well, Rose said.

“What we’ve forgotten is the water they’re getting, if it’s, say, from a river, is really part of a watershed,” she said. “If your upstream neighbor is polluting your water supply, there needs to be some coordination beyond the community in terms of protection.”

There aren’t good numbers to determine how many people die each year due to water-related diseases, because medical reporting varies in different parts of the world, and the diseases sometimes aren’t diagnosed, Gleick said. The World Health Organization estimated in 2000 that 2.2 million people die each year from diarrheal diseases alone. Other estimates that include various water-related diseases put that number higher than 5 million a year.

U.N. figures say 1.1 billion people worldwide live without access to safe drinking water and 2.5 billion lack proper sanitation.

And in January, at the request of the U.N. Environment Program, the institute completed a study that found the world’s freshwater resources are more threatened now than they have ever been.

NEW YORK — It makes an eye-opening story: knives, razors and pepper spray easily passing through supposedly beefed-up airport security. But it also raises troubling ethical questions: In particular, are journalists justified in breaking a law to expose weaknesses in enforcing it?

The New York Daily News, in an investigation published this week, revealed that its reporters had taken prohibited items through airport security 14 times at 11 different airports. Not one of them was caught.

The potential weapons were concealed in carry-on bags. Contraband was slipped past security at all four of the airports where terrorists boarded planes last Sept. 11, the News revealed.

A “CBS Evening News” story this week exposed similar weaknesses. CBS didn’t smuggle prohibited items, but tried to pass lead-lined film bags that block X-rays through security. In 70 percent of the cases, scanners didn’t notice or check the bags.

The stories, and the prospect of more of them, infuriate federal officials — not just, they say, because the results are embarrassing.

“It’s bad for the country,” said Department of Transportation spokesman Chet Lunner. “That these stories are helping the bad guys seems to be completely obfuscated by the rush to get attention or notoriety for your newspaper or broadcast.”

The Air Transport Association, the airline industry’s largest trade group, said reporters who try to test security this way should be prosecuted. Federal law prohibits both passing banned items through security and taking them on airplanes.

The Daily News story followed a similar investigation done last October, said Edward Kosner, the paper’s editor in chief.

Given the crucial part security lapses played Sept. 11 and the increased spending on improving the system, the Daily News believed it was important to check how the system is working.

“No one breaks any law lightly,” Kosner said. “In a way, I guess you could look at it as civil disobedience. We were willing to take the consequences.”

It would be different if reporters created a hazard by, for example, testing airline security by rushing a cockpit, he said.

CBS thought it could probe the system without smuggling prohibited items. If security didn’t see a large black blob that indicated their X-rays couldn’t get through, they wouldn’t see a concealed knife, said correspondent Vince Gonzales.

CBS would never break the law to get the story, he said.

“We didn’t believe it would be a good idea to try that,” he said, “especially when you had the National Guard standing with guns at a lot of those checkpoints.”

A code of ethics published by the Society of Professional Journalists doesn’t specifically address law-breaking. It advises that undercover or other surreptitious methods not be used unless there is no other way to get a story of compelling public interest.

“I don’t condone breaking the law just for the sake of doing it, just to get great footage for sweeps week,” said Jane Kirtley, a professor on media ethics at the University of Minnesota. “But the question always comes down to, how else are you going to test these things out?”

The federal government says these systems are checked by independent inspectors, with the results shared with Congress.

Reporting publicly on their weaknesses is like Pentagon reporters publishing news of troop movements, Lunner said. Potential terrorists could learn which airports have the weakest security and the best way to conceal weapons, he said.

“It shouldn’t be the media’s job to undermine the national security of the United States by increasing the risk to passengers and airline personnel,” said Michael Wascom, spokesman for the Air Transport Association.

Kosner said he understands the unhappiness, but the News considers the information important.

Similar stories have been done by a handful of local CBS affiliates, after CBS News first tested security earlier this year. Federal authorities conceded they’re in an awkward position when it comes to prosecuting reporters, since it may look like sour grapes because of an embarrassing story.

Plus, they’d have to catch them in the act.

“My own view is that security ought to be grateful to have these weaknesses exposed,” Kirtley said.

SACRAMENTO — A survey of California students released Friday found that more than 10 percent of high school students have tried the drug Ecstasy, prompting the state to create a media campaign to target use of the drug.

The biennial survey by state Attorney General Bill Lockyer’s office found that Ecstasy was the third most popular drug among the 7th, 9th and 11th graders questioned.

Alcohol and marijuana topped the survey, Lockyer said. This was the first year students were asked about their use of Ecstasy.

Though alcohol remained the most popular illegal substance, its use dropped more than other drugs, especially in the 7th and 11th grade, the survey found.

The previous survey, from 1999-2000, found that 35 percent of 7th graders had used alcohol in the previous six months, 52 percent of 9th graders and 66 percent of 11th grade students had used alcohol.

This year, 30 percent of 7th graders, 50 percent of 9th graders and 63 percent of 11th graders reported drinking in the past six months.

“The good news is that 7th graders are not drinking and smoking as much as they have in the past,” Lockyer said. “But we are concerned that heavy drinking and drug use among older high school students remain unacceptably high.”

The survey found 4 percent of 7th graders said they had smoked cigarettes in the last 30 days, down from 7 percent the year before.

Marijuana use remained at similar levels to the previous study, with 7 percent of 7th grade students saying they had smoked it in the last six months, a drop of 2 percent. Use among 9th graders and 11th graders remained at 19 percent and 34 percent, respectively.

Though Ecstasy, an illegal hallucinogenic drug popular at all-night parties, ranked third for drug use, it was at a much lower rate. Six percent of 9th graders and 11 percent of 11th graders reporting that they had tried the drug. Two percent of 7th graders, 5 percent of 9th graders, and 9 percent of 11th graders reported using Ecstasy in the past six months.

The survey’s results prompted the state Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs to focus a statewide media campaign on Ecstasy and other “club drugs,” said Kathryn P. Jett, the department’s director.

The attorney general’s study is conducted every two years, and is co-sponsored by the Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs and the Department of Education. The 2001-2002 study questioned 8,238 randomly selected students in 113 middle and high schools.

Opinion

Editorials

OAKLAND — Two summers ago, a band of four Oakland police officers who called themselves “The Riders,” patrolled the streets, administering their own brand of justice.

Prosecutors say the officers, who since have been fired, routinely beat up suspects, concocted evidence and falsified police reports.

Now, Clarence “Chuck” Mabanag, 36, Jude Siapno, 34 and Matthew Hornung, 30, are on trial for 26 felony charges stemming from their West Oakland patrols during the summer of 2000. Siapno faces the most serious charges, including kidnapping and assault.

Frank Vazquez, the alleged ringleader of the group, is believed to have fled the country.

Defense lawyers say the officers simply were doing their jobs in a tough neighborhood. All have pleaded innocent.

Assistant District Attorney David Hollister began presenting his opening statement to the jury Thursday.

“We look forward to finally get the opportunity to present our case,” he said.

It took two months to seat the Alameda County panel of six men and six women for the trial, which is expected to last through year’s end.

The scandal, which has resulted in the dismissal of about 90 criminal cases, mostly drug-related, and 17 civil rights suits by 115 people, surfaced after a then-20-year-old rookie reported what he saw on duty with Mabanag, his training officer.

Keith Batt, now a police officer in Pleasanton, is the prosecution’s key witness. During the preliminary hearing last July, Batt painted a disturbing picture of the officers’ “stop and grab” tactics in which suspects randomly were accosted on the street, handcuffed and put in the patrol car before they were questioned about their activities. He called their methods illegal and immoral.

Batt also hinted at a conspiracy of silence among the police brass who supervised “The Riders.”

Police and city officials have repeatedly called “The Riders” a rogue group, but they have, nonetheless, instituted a series of protective measures, including more internal affairs investigators and more supervisors. The department also created an Office of Inspector General, an internal audit division, and has generally increased internal scrutiny.

RICHMOND – State officials have announced the completion of two waste cleanups in Richmond, laying the foundation for future development.

Varying levels of asbestos and lead laden soil, debris and other materials have now been disposed of at both the Seacliff Marina and the Richmond Townhouse Apartment sites, allowing for future commercial and industrial development, a spokesperson for the California Environmental Protection Agency said this week.

“We are committed to working with communities and other governmental agencies as we continue the state's efforts to restore contaminated sites to productive use,” said Ed Lowry, director of the Department of Toxic Substances Control, which is part of the state EPA.

A 1986 soil investigation of the Seacliff Marina site, formerly a repair and maintenance ship yard, unearthed elevated concentrations of metals and asbestos, triggering a clean-up plan that was completed in 1998. A residential request in June 2001 prompted further cleanup activities as an elevated, encapsulated mound of soil and debris containing asbestos was removed from the site.

In the end, roughly 119,000 cubic yards of material was removed onto the adjacent Port of Richmond Shipyard No. 3 site, capped with compacted materials to prevent exposure and ultimately disposed of offsite, paving the way for approximately 11.6 acres of unrestricted land use.

In late 1998, the Contra Costa County Health Department alerted the Department of Toxic Substances Control of high levels of lead in the soil at the Richmond Townhouse Apartments site. Once owned by the Pullman railroad manufacturing company, the 10-acre Richmond Townhouse site went through initial cleanup efforts from April to August 2000 due to years of exposure to lead-based paints.

About 11,000 cubic yards of lead-contaminated soil surrounding the five apartment buildings at the site were removed and the area was later re-landscaped and backfilled with clean soil. All lead-contaminated soils were disposed of offsite.

OAKLAND – The Oakland Fire Department reports that a large brush fire in the hilly Oak Knoll neighborhood was contained Tuesday afternoon after burning 10 to 15 acres.

The fire just off Interstate Highway 580 began burning at 11:30 a.m., had threatened several homes in the area and even burned one home’s roof.

According to Battalion Chief James Williams, more than 150 firefighters and a dozen aircraft were still working the blaze, which is concentrated in a grove of eucalyptus trees rich in oil content. Williams said oil from the leaves is producing a spectacular effect with large flames and heavy, black smoke.

“The fire blows up quickly and then it dies down after consuming the fuel,” Williams said.

A Berkeley High School sophomore broke his right leg in two places Friday morning after leaping down a staircase to escape a small group of gang members, police said.

The incident came one day after several students took part in an unrelated fight after school in Civic Center Park, adjacent to the high school.

Police declined to release the names of the victims or alleged perpetrators in either attack since they are minors. But department spokesperson Inspector Arnold Lui said police planned to make a pair of arrests Monday afternoon. Lui could not confirm whether the suspects were involved in the first or second incident.

The attacks, just two weeks into the school year, came on the heels of several well-publicized attacks last year.

Berkeley High co-principal Laura Leventer expressed concern about last week’s events, but said that security at the school has improved since officials put a new safety plan in place last spring.

“I see a much more positive environment,” she said.

But Richard Crum, whose daughter dates the sophomore who broke his leg Friday, said the events of last week raise serious questions about security at Berkeley High School.

“This is a public school,” Crum said. “I think students have a right to attend school and get an education in a safe place.”

Crum said he might move his family out of the city so his two high school children can attend a new school.

According to Lui, the assailants in the Friday incident are from a Latino gang called the “Fourteens,” from west Berkeley, and believed that the victim, also a Latino, was from a rival south Berkeley gang called the “Thirteens.”

Crum said the victim is “in no way, shape or form” a member of a gang.

“He is at my house everyday studying,” Crum said.

The victim, who declined to discuss the details of the case, called the Daily Planet to say that he is not a gang member.

According to Crum, the victim underwent four hours of surgery to repair his leg at Alta Bates-Summit Medical Center Friday. An Alta Bates spokesperson said that he was discharged Sunday.

Lui said the Thursday fight in Civic Center Park stemmed from a verbal fight in a science class between two students. After school, a student backed by three or four friends approached the classmate and attacked him.

A female friend of the victim who tried to break up the fight took several blows from other female attackers but never saw their faces, Lui said.

The victim suffered a bruise and several cuts but declined medical treatment, Lui said. His female friend reported no injuries.

PASADENA – Bradlee Van Pelt led a scoring drive late in the fourth quarter but fumbled the two-point conversion attempt with 92 seconds left as 20th-ranked Colorado State lost at UCLA, 30-19.

The Rams pulled within 21-19 on Van Pelt’s six-yard keeper with 1:32 left. Van Pelt tried to run for the tying conversion but found little room and tried to pitch the ball to running back Cecil Sapp as he was hit by several defenders.

Van Pelt’s toss missed Sapp and the ball was picked up by Bruins safety Ben Emmanuel, who returned the fumble for two points.

Derrick Knight scored on a 12-yard touchdown run with 36 seconds remaining as the Eagles rallied for a 34-27 victory over the Cardinal.

No. 13 Oregon 28, Fresno State 24

EUGENE, Ore. – Onterrio Smith’s two-yard touchdown run with 1:07 remaining rallied 13th-ranked Oregon to a 28-24 victory over pesky Fresno State and its 17th straight home non-conference win.

Oregon State 35, Temple 3

PHILADELPHIA – Derek Anderson threw for 286 yards and four touchdowns - two to James Newson - leading Oregon State to a 35-3 rout of Temple in the first-ever meeting between the schools.

No. 14 Washington 34, San Jose State 10

SEATTLE – Cody Pickett threw for 347 yards and three touchdowns, including a school-record 89-yard strike to Reggie Williams, as the 14th-ranked Huskies bounced back from a 10-point halftime deficit to defeat San Jose State, 34-10.

No. 12 Washington State 49, Idaho 14

PULLMAN, Wash. – Jonathan Smith and Jason Gesser accounted for six touchdowns as the 12th-ranked Cougars routed Idaho, 49-14, in the 84th “Battle of the Palouse.”

Smith rushed for 124 yards and three touchdowns on 12 carries, while Gesser completed 11-of-15 passes for 178 yards and three scores in limited action.

UC Berkeley is offering its first course taught entirely over the Internet this year.

“Gems and Gem Materials” is an undergraduate course that is offered by the earth and planetary science department. It targets non-science majors who want to satisfy their physical science requirement.

Taught by professor Jill Banfield, the course will post all of its materials – from quizzes to texts to video presentations – on the web.

The site, located http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~eps2/, is open to everyone.

Banfield and her teaching assistant will be available to meet face to face with students during office hours, and students must show up in person to take the midterm and final examinations, but most of the interaction will take place through e-mail.

While the UC Berkeley Extension school already offers online courses, and some classes at UC Berkeley incorporate the Internet into studies, this is the first course to completely abandon the confines of a building.

Physics professor Robert Jacobson, who reviewed the course materials as part of the academic senate panel that approved the course's test run, says that the course could be just the tip of the iceberg for cyber-education at UC Berkeley but adds that there are still many lessons to be learned.

“Changing the way we teach is a progression, we have to learn what works best and what doesn't,” Jacobsen said. “I think this has started the snowball rolling.”

Statistics professor Philip Stark, who is assistant in education technology for the university's Office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Affairs, said that the university supports using technology when appropriate, but added that technology will never fully replace the classroom.

The favored method, he said, is as part as a “hybrid” approach that incorporates technology to supplement lectures and other personal interactions between professors and students.

“Neither the administration nor the faculty think that a UC Berkeley undergraduate education should consist of sitting in front of a computer in lieu of face-to-face contact with an instructor,” Stark said.

“As I see it, Berkeley is a research university, and this course is an experiment – it's research into teaching – to see how well the approach works.”